Comparative regulomics of wood formation across dicot and conifer trees
Understanding the regulatory program underlying wood formation is key to improving biomass production and carbon sequestration in trees. However, how wood formation evolved and how these programs have been rewired across lineages remains unclear. Here, we present the first high-spatial-resolution evo-devo resource for wood transcriptomes spanning multiple dicots and conifers, representing the two major tree-containing lineages separated by more than 300 million years of evolution. Using orthology-aware co-expression network analysis, we identified genes with conserved and lineage-specific expression patterns. By integrating chromatin accessibility data and transcription factor motif analysis, we further inferred candidate regulatory networks for xylem differentiation and secondary cell wall formation. We demonstrate how this dataset can be used to answer long standing questions in wood biology related to differences in acetylation of cell wall polymers and master regulators of xylem specification across dicot and conifer tree species. The data offer a resource for the tree biology and evo-devo communities, and are publicly available at PlantGenIE.org.
Authors
- Jason Hill (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0151-8931)
- Siri Birkeland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8104-8537)
- Torgeir Rhoden Hvidsten (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6097-2539)
- Åsmund K. Røhr (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4956-4865)
- Ewa J. Mellerowicz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6817-1031)
- Jamie McCann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2310-4462)
- Zulema Carracedo Lorenzo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5321-6492)
- Aline Voxeur (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9452-6756)
- Hannele Tuominen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4949-3702)
- Nathaniel R. Street (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6031-005X)
- Vikash Kumar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1670-3491)
- Eliana Rodriguez
- Teitur Ahlgren Kalman
- Ellen Dimmen Chapple
- Samuel Fredriksson
- Sivagamy Soundiramourtty
Institutions
- Uppsala University (SE)
- University of Oslo (NO)
- Université Paris-Saclay (FR)
- Science for Life Laboratory (SE)
- Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SE)
- Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture, l'Alimentation et l'Environnement (FR)
- Institut Jean-Pierre Bourgin (FR)
- Umeå Plant Science Centre (SE)
- Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NO)
- Umeå University (SE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Communications
- Published
- 2026-07-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75624-2
- Primary Topic
- Plant Molecular Biology Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche
- Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse
- Norges Forskningsråd
- Skogforsk