Patterns of gene co-expression under water-deficit treatments and pan-genome occupancy in Brachypodium distachyon

Plants respond to abiotic constraints showing altered regulation patterns though those patterns partially overlap with constitutive expression patterns pending on the severity of the stress and the genotype. Knowledge on the differences of co-expression patterns between drought and control conditions across ecotypes of a model plant would provide a theoretical framework to disentangle the specificity of the response to the intensity of the stressor at the species level or for particularly adapted ecotypes. Gene co-expression networks have been used to gain insights into gene regulation patterns and to detect interactions between stress and development signaling pathways. We analyzed weighted gene co-expression networks from leaf transcriptome data for drought response in the purple false brome Brachypodium distachyon and investigated network topology and differential expression of genes putatively involved in adaptation to this stressor.