Abstract
Droughts, due to global warming, have become a major abiotic stress for plants. Rhododendron pulchrum is among the top 10 most sought-after flowers in China; however, because of its sensitivity to water, it is often drought-stressed in landscaping practices. This has restricted its promotion in garden landscaping. Thus, we performed transcriptomic analyses of this species under moderate to severe dehydration and rehydration to investigate the dynamics of gene expression. A total of 310, 1452, and 2610 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified under moderate drought stress vs control, moderate drought vs severe drought, and severe drought vs re-watering conditions, respectively. A total of 209 transcription factors (TFs) were shown to be dehydration-responsive. Trend analysis of all the DEGs yielded 26 profiles of dynamic expression patterns. Among them, 6 profiles could be further grouped into cluster 1 (1230 DEGs) and cluster 2 (1164 DEGs) representing drought-induced and drought-repressed conditions, respectively. Transcriptomic changes in the key GO/pathways in this plant were analyzed and have been discussed in relation to hormone signal transduction, metabolic processes, and protein protective activity during drought treatment. This study provides valuable dataset regarding R. pulchrum gene expression changes in response to drought and may facilitate identification of potential genes that could be used to improve drought tolerance via genetic engineering of non-model plant species.
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Data archiving statement
All sequence data supporting this work are available in the NCBI SRA database under the project ID: SRP188788.
Funding
This study was financed by the Natural Science Research Fund of Higher Education Institutions, Anhui Province (KJ2016A237).
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The manuscript was written by Keyuan Mu. Chunyi Liu and Yaling Guo designed and performed the experiment. Hua Wang carried out all the experimental analysis and prepared all figures and tables. Xinyi Deng assisted in explaining the results and revised the final version of the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Table S1
Mapped statistical results of 8 libraries (XLSX 12 kb)
Table S2
The differently expressed genes detected between CK, MD, SD, and RW. (XLSX 2280 kb)
Table S3
Differently expressed transcription factors between CK, MD, SD, and RW. (XLSX 98 kb)
Table S4
Primer sequences used for quantitative PCR validation. (XLSX 10 kb)
Table S5
Molecular functions of GO enrichment analysis of differently expressed genes detected between SD and RW (XLSX 346 kb)
Table S6
Pathway Enrichment of differently expressed genes detected between CK and MD (XLSX 26 kb)
Table S7
The differently expressed genes of Cluster 1 and Cluster 2. (XLSX 1031 kb)
Table S8
Lists of GO enrichment analysis of differentially expressed genes in Cluster 1 and Cluster 2. (XLSX 226 kb)
Table S9
Pathway Enrichment of differently expressed genes of Cluster 1 (XLSX 22 kb)
Table S10
Putative kinases affecting drought tolerance in R. pulchrum. (XLSX 35 kb)
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Wang, H., Mu, K., Liu, C. et al. Gene expression profiling of Rhododendron pulchrum leaves under drought stress. Tree Genetics & Genomes 16, 58 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-020-01450-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-020-01450-2