At present, the underlying molecular mechanism of heterosis remains elusive, and the effect of three-dimensional structural dynamics on heterosis is still in its infancy. Therefore, integrating 3D genomics and transcriptomics is imperative for gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the role of chromatin in 3D space in heterosis.
In this study, the transcriptome date confirmed that hybridization leads to activation of gene expression in F
1 plants. However, only a small number of genes were specifically expressed or displayed significantly different levels of expression. These indicated that the genome-wide expression profiles of the hybrid F
1 and parents are similar. Previous studies on heterosis produced by intraspecific hybridization also confirmed that most genes in hybrids and parents showed similar expression profiles, and the expression level of these genes is close to MPV [
30,
31,
32]. Emerging genomic and epigenetic perspectives suggest that heterosis results from allelic interactions between parent genomes, resulting in changes in genetic programming that promote hybrid growth, stress tolerance, and fitness. For example, epigenetic modification of key regulatory genes in hybrids can alter complex physiological and metabolic regulatory networks to regulate biomass heterosis. GO function annotation indicated that DEGs were significantly enriched in "response to auxin", "nucleoside transport", " nicotinamide riboside transport ", while the largest number of DEGs are found in "DNA metabolic process". It is worth mentioning that in most studies on the molecular mechanism of heterosis, the metabolic process is unanimously recognized as related to growth or biomass heterosis [
30,
33,
34]. In KEGG analysis, we also found DEGs enriched in "Starch and sucrose metabolism". The enrichment level of metabolic pathway in different tissues and development stages of different plants is different, and considerable studies believe that carbohydrate metabolism is related to the formation of heterosis [
30,
35,
36]. In addition, "Plant hormone signal transduction" also be found. Studies have shown that dynamic three-dimensional chromatin structure helps the expression of plant hormone-related genes in F
1, which is related to plant growth [
18].
Furthermore, genome-wide chromosome simulations show that each chromosome occupies a dedicated region of the nucleus. This is also a good explanation for the higher intra-chromatin interactions than inter-chromatin interactions found at 1 Mb resolution. However, by calculating the interaction ratio of inter/intra, it was found that F
1 is more active than that between the chromosomes of both parents. This may also be one of the reasons why F
1 has more active genes and upregulated genes. In general, A compartments are in the transcriptional active region of euchromatin, and B compartments are in the transcriptional repressed region of heterochromatin. During hybridization, F
1 have a greater number of A compartments, and the chromatin status of F
1 is more inclined to A compartments when the parental compartments are different. Heterochromatin remodeling is critical for a variety of cellular processes [
37]. Therefore, the B-toA compartments shift is considered beneficial to the formation of heterosis. In terms of TADs, we compared the specific TAD and TAD boundary, as well as the length and quantity of the TAD genomes. Parents and hybrids exhibit significant differences in terms of TAD. It has been appreciated that the existence of a preformed and stable topology (TADs) organizes the physical proximity between enhancers and their target genes. Although there is no obvious differences of A/B compartments, the change of TADs may be one of the reasons why hybridization activates more genes in F
1. Subsequently, 140 DEGs with genomic structural variants were selected as potential candidate genes, including 3 photosynthetic genes (
BraA02003217,
BraA07001020,and
BraA07001021), 8 plant cell size/division/cycle-related (
BraA06003576,
BraA05002844,
BraA07001159,
BraA03006134,
BraA05001791,
BraA02002099,
BraA02003420,
BraA02002337), 4 Carbohydrate metabolism genes (
BraA07001318,
BraA06002248,
BraA07001149,
BraA01003773), 9 resistance and stress related genes (
BraA04000638,
BraA07000080,
BraA09003537,
BraA09003725,
BraA02003318,
BraA07001184,
BraA06002291,
BraA07001349,
BraA06002292), 3 genes response to auxin (
BraA02003420,
BraA06000631,
BraA07001182), 1 development and cell death genes (
BraA05002866), 1 senescence associated gene (
BraA08002232). However, further functional verification is required for these candidate DEGs. In the future, we will obtain a mutant of the candidate DEGs through gene editing or other methods, observe its corresponding phenotype, and then obtain overexpressed plants to further determine the phenotype. In addition, expression pattern analysis of the candidate DEGs is also needed. For example, analyzing its expression levels in different tissues at different stages, or its expression sites in cells. If possible, we will further investigate its interacting proteins and the regulatory relationships between upstream and downstream.
Gene expression is precisely regulated by the multi-layered three-dimensional structure of chromatin [
29]. Different layers of the 3D genome have various levels of regulatory control [
38]. This study specifically focuses on the beneficial aspects of the 3D genome, however, further exploration is needed to understand the specific regulations. With the advancement of technology, it is believed that the impact of spatial structure changes of chromatin on heterosis will be further explored and interpreted in the future.