Pra-GE-ATLAS: empowering Pinus radiata stress and breeding research through a comprehensive multi-omics database

In recent decades, research on model organisms have significantly increased our understanding of core biological processes in plant science. However, this focus has created a substantial knowledge bottleneck due to the limited phylogenetic and ecological spectrum covered. Gymnosperms, especially conifers, represent a molecular and ecological diversity hotspot among seed plants. Despite their importance, research on these species is notably underrepresented, primarily due to a slower pace of investigation resulting from a lack of community-based resources and databases. To fill this gap, we developed P(inus)ra(diata)-G(ene)E(xpression)-ATLAS, which consists of several tools and two main modules: transcriptomics and proteomics, presented in this work for the forestry commercial and stress-sensitive species Pinus radiata. We summarised and centralised all the available information to provide a comprehensive view of the gene expression landscape. To illustrate how applications of the database lead to new biological insights, we integrated multiple regulatory layers across tissues and stressors. While stress favors the retention of small introns, harmonised alternative splicing analyses reveal that genes with conifers’ iconic large introns tend to be under constitutive regulation. Furthermore, the degree of convergence between stressors differed between regulatory layers, with proteomic responses remaining highly distinctive even through intergenerational memory tolerance. Overall, Pra-GE-ATLAS aims to narrow the distance between angiosperms and gymnosperms resources, deepening our understanding of how characteristic pine features have evolved. Pra-GE-ATLAS is available at https://pra-ge-atlas.valmei.es.