Abstract
Wheat, a major worldwide staple food crop, is relatively sensitive to a changing environment, including high temperature. The comprehensive mechanism of heat stress response at the molecular level and exploitation of candidate tolerant genes are far from enough. Using transcriptome data, we analyzed the gene expression profiles of wheat under heat stress. A total of 1705 and 17 commonly differential expressed genes (DEGs) were identified in wheat grain and flag leaf, respectively, through transcriptome analysis. Gene Ontology (GO) and pathway enrichment were also applied to illustrate the functions and metabolic pathways of DEGs involved in thermotolerance of wheat grain and flag leaf. Furthermore, our data suggest that there may be a more complex molecular mechanism or tighter regulatory network in flag leaf than in grain under heat stress over time, as less commonly DEGs, more discrete expression profiles of genes (principle component analysis) and less similar pathway response were observed in flag leaf. In addition, we found that transcriptional regulation of zeatin, brassinosteroid and flavonoid biosynthesis pathways may play an important role in wheat’s heat tolerance. The expression changes of some genes were validated using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and three potential genes involved in the flavonoid biosynthesis process were identified.
Highlights
Various climatic factors, such as light, water and temperature, all have great influences on crop production
RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data of 36 samples from wheat grain and flag leaf, containing three parallel experiments exposed to high temperature (37 ◦ C) for 0 min, 5 min, 10 min, 30 min, 1 h, and 4 h were analyzed
We found that linoleic acid metabolism, fatty acid metabolism and glycerolipid metabolism were enriched in flag leaf, indicating that the regulation of glycerolipid metabolism at a transcriptional level is important for the heat stress response, which is consistent with the results of previous reports [47,48]
Summary
Various climatic factors, such as light, water and temperature, all have great influences on crop production. The high temperature, which could shorten the life cycle by reducing the duration of plant development phases, has become an important factor that adversely influences crop cultivation and productivity [1,2]. As one of the most important food crops cultivated worldwide, wheat is no exception. Wheat can not escape or keep away from high temperature; it develops its own regulatory network system, including physiological and biochemistry processes to cope with the adverse environment. Previous reports showed that plants exhibited significant changes in phenotypic or physiological indices when challenged with high temperatures [3], which always causes serious impacts on yields
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