Abstract
Drought is the main environmental factor impairing hemp growth and yield. In order to decipher the molecular responses of hemp to drought stress, transcriptome changes of drought-stressed hemp (DS1 and DS2), compared to well-watered control hemp (CK1 and CK2), were studied with RNA-Seq technology. RNA-Seq generated 9.83, 11.30, 11.66, and 11.31 M clean reads in the CK1, CK2, DS1, and DS2 libraries, respectively. A total of 1292 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including 409 (31.66%) upregulated and 883 (68.34%) downregulated genes, were identified. The expression patterns of 12 selected genes were validated by qRT-PCR, and the results were accordant with Illumina analysis. Gene Ontology (GO) and KEGG analysis illuminated particular important biological processes and pathways, which enriched many candidate genes such as NAC, B3, peroxidase, expansin, and inositol oxygenase that may play important roles in hemp tolerance to drought. Eleven KEGG pathways were significantly influenced, the most influenced being the plant hormone signal transduction pathway with 15 differentially expressed genes. A similar expression pattern of genes involved in the abscisic acid (ABA) pathway under drought, and ABA induction, suggested that ABA is important in the drought stress response of hemp. These findings provide useful insights into the drought stress regulatory mechanism in hemp.
Highlights
Abiotic stresses, such as drought, high salt, and extremes of temperature, are major environmental factors that can limit plant growth and development
These results indicate that reliable sequence alignment results were obtained for gene analysis
When the sequencing level reached 6 M or more, only a few new genes were detected in the four libraries (Figure 1), indicating all four libraries were sequenced to saturation
Summary
Abiotic stresses, such as drought, high salt, and extremes of temperature, are major environmental factors that can limit plant growth and development. Drought stress or water deficit induces a series of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular changes that influence plant growth, development, and productivity. One group contains proteins that are likely involved in abiotic stress tolerance, such as chaperones, late embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins, osmotin, mRNA-binding proteins, key enzymes for osmolyte biosynthesis, water channel proteins, sugar and proline transporters, detoxification enzymes, and various proteases. Another group contains regulatory proteins involved in signal transduction and stressresponsive gene expression, including various transcription
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