Hot Takes: A Comprehensive Review of Genes That Help Plants Survive Drought

Increasing temperatures and aridity negatively affect plant communities, including the recruitment of keystone ecological species like big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). While research on the genomic basis of plant resilience towards drought has been conducted in crops and model plants, fewer studies have evaluated natural plant communities. We provide a resource for identifying genes underpinning drought across a broad range of plants using a literature mining approach with the newly developed package LitRevieweR. Our results confirm that most peer-reviewed studies on drought resistance in plants are conducted on model and crop species that already have genomic resources available. This approach also identified over 4K genes associated with drought. Top-reported genes (e.g., AER, PER, and GWD) show associations with dozens of biological processes including proteogenesis, photosynthesis, stress response, and immune response. Our research will be used to construct networks for genome to phenome research, with applicability to assessing adaptive capacity of natural plant communities towards drought, pointedly big sagebrush. We anticipate this research informing future restoration efforts for sagebrush and other plant species by ensuring individuals have the adaptive capacity to endure future drought conditions.