Abstract
BackgroundCorylus was renowned for its production of hazelnut and taxol. To understand the local adaptation of Chinese species and speed up breeding efforts in China, we analyzed the leaf transcriptome of Corylus mandshurica, which had a high tolerance to fungal infections and cold.ResultsA total of 12,255,030 clean pair-end reads were generated and then assembled into 37,846 Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) sequences. During functional annotation, 26,565 ESTs were annotated with Gene Ontology (GO) terms using Blast2go and 11,056 ESTs were grouped into the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways using KEGG Automatic Annotation Server (KAAS). We identified 45 ESTs that were homologous to enzymes and transcription factors responsible for taxol synthesis. The most differentiated orthologs between C. mandshurica and a European congener, C. avellana, were enriched in stress tolerance to fungal resistance and cold.ConclusionsIn this study, we detected a set of genes related to taxol synthesis in a taxol-producing angiosperm species for the first time and found a close relationship between most differentiated genes and different adaptations to fungal infection and cold in C. mandshurica and C. avellana. These findings provided tools to improve our understanding of local adaptation, genetic breeding and taxol production in hazelnut.
Highlights
Corylus was renowned for its production of hazelnut and taxol
26,565 Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) were annotated with Gene Ontology (GO) terms using Blast2go [35] and 11,056 ESTs were annotated into Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways with KEGG Automatic Annotation Server (KAAS) [36] using the Single-directional Best Hit (SBH) method
The orthologs with INDEL were enriched in hormone-related or various stimuli-related GO terms in the biological process domain. These findings suggested that C. mandshurica and C. avellana had become genetically differentiated whilst adapting to their different habitats
Summary
Corylus was renowned for its production of hazelnut and taxol. To understand the local adaptation of Chinese species and speed up breeding efforts in China, we analyzed the leaf transcriptome of Corylus mandshurica, which had a high tolerance to fungal infections and cold. Corylus is an important genus, both economically and ecologically, in China. Its stocks have been successfully used for grafting Castanea henryi to improve chestnut production and quality [3] and have been shown to be an ideal substitute for logs of Carpinus cordata in Ganoderma culture [4]. A part from its clear economic importance, Corylus plays an important role in soil and water conservation owing to its strong root system and contributes to the sustainability of forests in this region [2]
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