Abstract
Selaginella tamariscina (Beauv.) spring, a primitive vascular resurrection plant, can survive extreme drought and recover when water becomes available. To identify drought-inducible genes and to clarify the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance, a comparative transcriptional pattern analysis was conducted between S. tamariscina and Selaginella moellendorffii Hieron (drought sensitive). 133 drought related genes were identified, including 72 functional genes and 61 regulatory genes. And several drought responsive reactions, such as antioxidant activity, osmotic balance, cuticle defense and signal transduction were highlighted in S. tamariscina under drought. Notably, besides peroxidase, catalase and L-ascorbate oxidase genes, DEGs associated with phenylalanine metabolism and polyamine catabolism could be alternative ways to enhance antioxidant ability in S. tamariscina. DEGs related to soluble carbohydrate metabolism, late embryogenesis abundant protein (LEA) and aquaporin protein (AQP) confirmed that osmotic adjustment could resist drought during desiccation. DEGs involved in xyloglucan metabolic process, pectin metabolic process and cutin biosynthesis may also contribute to drought tolerance of S. tamariscina by cuticle defense. Drought-responsive genes encoding protein kinases, calcium sensors, transcription factors (TFs) and plant hormones also help to drought resistance of S. tamariscina. The preliminary validation experiments were performed and the results were consistent with our hypothetical integrated regulatory network. The results of this study provide candidate resurrection genes and an integrated regulatory network for further studies on the molecular mechanisms of stress tolerance in S. tamariscina.
Highlights
Plants of the Selaginella genus occupy a key phylogenetic position in the evolution of vascular plants [1,2]
According to the methods described in previous studies[13,14], we established the rate of relative water content (RWC) loss during the dehydration process through the following steps. nine plants of each species were submerged in distilled water at room temperature and weighed every eight hours
A large amount of clean data were obtained from S. tamariscina and S. moellendorfii, respectively
Summary
Plants of the Selaginella genus occupy a key phylogenetic position in the evolution of vascular plants [1,2]. As one member of the Selaginella genus, Selaginella tamariscina (Beauv.) spring is a herbal medicine that is commonly used to treat cancer, hepatitis, and diabetes, and is widely used in clinical practice [5,6,7,8]. S. tamariscina has evolved desiccation tolerance to survive an extreme drought state and is restored as soon as water becomes available[9]. With the spread of arid and semi-arid areas, screening drought-resistant varieties, revealing their drought resistance mechanism, and developing their potential application value has become a popular research topic. S. tamariscina is of great theoretical and practical significance in research on drought resistance mechanisms because of its unique resuscitation habits
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