Diurnal.plant.tools in 2024: expanding to Marchantia polymorpha and four angiosperms

Abstract

Diurnal gene expression is a pervasive phenomenon occurring across all kingdoms of life, orchestrating adaptive responses to daily environmental fluctuations and thus enhancing organismal fitness. Our understanding of the plant circadian clock is primarily derived from studies in Arabidopsis and direct comparisons are difficult due to differences in gene family sizes. To this end, the identification of functional orthologs based on diurnal and tissue expression is necessary. The diurnal.plant.tools database constitutes a repository of gene expression profiles from 17 members of the Archaeplastida lineage, with built-in tools facilitating cross-species comparisons. In this database update, we expand the dataset with diurnal gene expression from 4 agriculturally significant crop species and Marchantia, a plant of evolutionary significance. Notably, the inclusion of diurnal gene expression data for Marchantia enables researchers to glean insights into the evolutionary trajectories of the circadian clock and other biological processes spanning from algae to angiosperms. Moreover, by integrating data from tissue, and perturbation gene expression datasets for Marchantia from other databases, the diurnal dataset complements it to offer a comprehensive overview of gene functions across varied biological contexts. This expanded database serves as a valuable resource for elucidating the intricacies of diurnal gene regulation and its evolutionary underpinnings in plant biology.