Differential Gene Expression Responding to Low Phosphate Stress in Leaves and Roots of Maize by cDNA-SRAP.

Lei Yan,Hao Li,Fengjie Sun,Liang Su,Rui Li,Jianrong Bai

doi:10.1155/2020/8420151

Abstract

Phosphate (Pi) deficiency in soil can have severe impacts on the growth, development, and production of maize worldwide. In this study, a cDNA-sequence-related amplified polymorphism (cDNA-SRAP) transcript profiling technique was used to evaluate the gene expression in leaves and roots of maize under Pi stress for seven days. A total of 2494 differentially expressed fragments (DEFs) were identified in response to Pi starvation with 1202 and 1292 DEFs in leaves and roots, respectively, using a total of 60 primer pairs in the cDNA-SRAP analysis. These DEFs were categorized into 13 differential gene expression patterns. Results of sequencing and functional analysis showed that 63 DEFs (33 in leaves and 30 in roots) were annotated to a total of 54 genes involved in diverse groups of biological pathways, including metabolism, photosynthesis, signal transduction, transcription, transport, cellular processes, genetic information, and organismal system. This study demonstrated that (1) the cDNA-SRAP transcriptomic profiling technique is a powerful method to analyze differential gene expression in maize showing advantageous features among several transcriptomic methods; (2) maize undergoes a complex adaptive process in response to low Pi stress; and (3) a total of seven differentially expressed genes were identified in response to low Pi stress in leaves or roots of maize and could be used in the genetic modification of maize.

Highlights

Maize is a well-known economically important crop in the world
In comparison to our results, these studies suggested that cDNA-sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP) analysis is more powerful and advantageous than other transcriptomic analyses in identifying the number of differentially expressed fragments (DEFs) in maize responding to low Pi stress, while our results provide a more complete and integrated variations at the transcriptional level between the treatment of high Pi (HP) and LP stress
We apply the cDNA-SRAP method to identify the DEFs in both roots and leaves of maize under low Pi stress

Summary

Introduction

Maize is a well-known economically important crop in the world. the maize production is commonly affected by phosphate (Pi) deficiency in soil due to the high percentage of fixed Pi that cannot be absorbed by plants [1]. The Pi uptake is increased by directly inducing the expression of Pi transporters, while the inositol polyphosphates are shown to play important roles in the intracellular Pi signaling [3,4,5]. Previous studies have investigated gene expression patterns in response to plant defense against low Pi [6,7,8,9,10,11,12]. MicroRNAs (e.g., miRNA399b and ZmamiR3) are induced to express in the roots of maize under low Pi stress [12], while studies of metabolite profiling and genome-wide association have shown that the gene encoding glucose-6-phosphate-1-epimerase is capable of correlating traits based on the Pi levels in maize seedlings [9]. Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a dominant role in regulating candidate genes in response to Pi stress in Arabidopsis [11]

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