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Comparative transcriptome analysis of fruiting body and sporulating mycelia of Villosiclava virens reveals genes with putative functions in sexual reproduction

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Abstract

Sexual reproduction of heterothallic clavicipitaceous fungus Villosiclava virens (anamorph: Ustilaginoidea virens) generates ascospores, which is considered as primary infection source of rice false smut disease. However, little is known about the molecular underpinnings of sexual reproduction in V. virens. In this study, transcriptomes of V. virens in fruiting body (FB) and sporulating mycelia (SM) were compared using Illumina paired-end sequencing technology. A total of 33,384,588 and 23,765,275 clean reads of FB and SM transcriptome profiles could be used to map cDNA of V. virens, respectively. We evaluated the gene expression variations between FB and SM, a total of 488 genes therein were significantly higher expressed in FB than SM, and 342 genes were significantly higher expressed genes in SM than FB. These differentially expressed genes were annotated using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes and Gene Ontology databases. Several genes were found to specifically function in sexual reproduction, involving in mating type, pheromone synthesis, signaling transduction, transcription factors, and meiosis; additionally, a few of genes were presumed to function in conidia sporulation and infection. Comparative transcriptome analysis of V. virens during FB and SM provided an overview of gene expression profiles at the transcriptional level and provided hints to better understand the molecular mechanisms of sexual development. Additionally, the data presented here also proved benefit for mining of essential genes contributing to sexual conidiation and infection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China

    Jun-Jie Yu, Mi-Na Yu, Ya-Feng Nie, Xiao-Le Yin, Jie Zhao, Ya-Hui Wang, Hui Ding, Zhong-Qiang Qi, Yan Du & Yong-Feng Liu

  2. Department of Plant Pathology and the Ministry of Agriculture Key Laboratory for Plant Pathology, China Agricultural University, 100193, Beijing, China

    Wen-Xian Sun

  3. Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717-3150, USA

    Li Huang

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  1. Jun-Jie Yu
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Correspondence to Yong-Feng Liu.

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This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number: 31371899), the Agriculture Innovation Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Grant Number: CX(12)5005, CX(15)1054).

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Communicated by M. Kupiec.

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Yu, JJ., Yu, MN., Nie, YF. et al. Comparative transcriptome analysis of fruiting body and sporulating mycelia of Villosiclava virens reveals genes with putative functions in sexual reproduction. Curr Genet 62, 575–584 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-015-0563-1

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