Genomic basis of transcriptome dynamics in rice under field conditions

How genetic variations affect gene expression dynamics of field-grown plants remains unclear. Using statistical analysis of large-scale time-series RNA-sequencing of field-grown rice from chromosome segment substitution lines (CSSLs), we identified 1675 expression dynamics quantitative trait loci (edQTLs) leading to polymorphisms in expression dynamics under field conditions. Based on the edQTL and environmental information, we successfully predicted gene expression under environments different from training environments, and in rice cultivars with more complex genotypes than the CSSLs. Overall, edQTL’ identification helped understanding the genetic architecture of expression dynamics under field conditions, which is difficult to assess with laboratory experiments1.The prediction of expression based on edQTL and environmental information will contribute to crop breeding by increasing the accuracy of trait prediction under diverse conditions.