Abstract
Loranthus (Taxillus chinensis) is a facultative, hemiparasite and stem parasitic plant that attacks other plants for living. Transcriptome sequencing and bioinformatics analysis were applied in this study to identify the gene expression profiles of fresh seeds (CK), baby (FB), and adult haustoria tissues (FD). We assembled 160,571 loranthus genes, of which 64,926, 35,417, and 47,249 were aligned to NR, GO, and KEGG pathway databases, respectively. We identified 14,295, 15,921, and 16,402 genes in CK, FB, and FD, respectively. We next identified 5,480 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the process, of which 258, 174, 81, and 94 were encoding ribosomal proteins (RP), transcription factors (TF), ubiquitin, and disease resistance proteins, respectively. Some DEGs were identified to be upregulated along with the haustoria development (e.g., 68 RP and 26 ubiquitin genes). Notably, 36 RP DEGs peak at FB; 10 ER, 5 WRKY, 6 bHLH, and 4 MYB TF genes upregulated only in FD. Further, we identified 4 out of 32 microRNA genes dysregulated in the loranthus haustoria development. This is the first haustoria transcriptome of loranthus, and our findings will improve our understanding of the molecular mechanism of haustoria.
Highlights
Taxillus chinensis (DC.) Danser, called loranthus or “San Ji Sheng”, is a member of Loranthaceae family and mainly distributed in the southern and southwestern areas of China
No transcription factors (TF) genes were upregulated along with the loranthus haustoria development; we found some key TF genes started their upregulation from FB, including 9 ER, 4 WRKY, and 4 MYB (Supplementary Table S2)
We identified the dysregulation of bHLH, ER, MYB, and WRKY TFs (Table 2, Figure 3(c)), which may function in the formation and development of endosperm chalazal haustorium in Taxillus chinensis
Summary
Taxillus chinensis (DC.) Danser, called loranthus or “San Ji Sheng” (in Chinese), is a member of Loranthaceae family and mainly distributed in the southern and southwestern areas of China. It has a long history of being used in the Chinese traditional medicine, mainly because its stems and leaves can be used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthralgia, threat of abortion, and hypertension [1, 2]. Parasitic plants can be classified as hemiparasites or holoparasites based on whether they have retained or completely lost the photosynthetic activity [3] Based on these characteristics, loranthus is a facultative, hemiparasite, and stem parasite
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