Abstract
To understand the molecular basis of sugarcane-smut interaction, it is important to identify sugarcane genes that respond to the pathogen attack. High-throughput tag-sequencing (tag-seq) analysis by Solexa technology was performed on sugarcane infected with Sporisorium scitaminea, which should have massively increased the amount of data available for transcriptome profile analysis. After mapping to sugarcane EST databases in NCBI, we obtained 2015 differentially expressed genes, of which 1125 were upregulated and 890 downregulated by infection. Gene ontology (GO) analysis revealed that the differentially expressed genes involve in many cellular processes. Pathway analysis revealed that metabolic pathways and ribosome function are significantly affected, where upregulation of expression dominates over downregulation. Differential expression of three candidate genes involved in MAP kinase signaling pathway, ScBAK1 (GenBank Accession number: KC857629), ScMapkk (GenBank Accession number: KC857627), and ScGloI (GenBank Accession number: KC857628), was confirmed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis concluded that the expression of these genes were all up-regulated after the infection of S. scitaminea and may play a role in pathogen response in sugarcane. The present study provides insights into the molecular mechanism of sugarcane defense to S. scitaminea infection, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of sugarcane-smut interaction.
Highlights
Sugarcane is the most important sugar crop and accounts for more than 90 percent of total sugar production in China [1]
The results showed that during 0 h–12 h after pathogen infection, the expression of these three genes in both smut-resistant genotype and smut-susceptible genotype were up-regulated, but their expressions in smut-resistant genotype were much more significant than that in the smutsusceptible genotype especially for ScMapkk and ScGloI genes
Transcriptome analysis using high-throughput short-read sequencing technology, such as Solexa sequencing, is straightforward, and does not have to be restricted to the genome of model organisms [25, 28, 29]. This analysis can provide information on gene expression and gene regulation and is essential to interpret the functional elements of the genome and reveal molecular mechanisms [32]
Summary
Sugarcane is the most important sugar crop and accounts for more than 90 percent of total sugar production in China [1]. Sugarcane smut, caused by Sporisorium scitaminea, is an important sugarcane fungal disease worldwide and is one of the most important sugarcane diseases in China [2]. It was firstly reported in 1887 from Natal, South Africa [1]. The loss of stalk yield for smut susceptible varieties is serious [3, 4]. Sugarcane smut is prevalent in sugarcane producing areas all over the world and has caused the elimination of several sugarcane varieties with high yield and high sugar [5]. Smut resistance is a major objective of sugarcane variety breeding [6, 7]
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