Abstract
Haloxylon persicum is an endangered western Asiatic desert plant species, which survives under extreme environmental conditions. In this study, we focused on transcriptome analysis of H. persicum to understand the molecular mechanisms associated with drought tolerance. Two different periods of polyethylene glycol (PEG)-induced drought stress (48 h and 72 h) were imposed on H. persicum under in vitro conditions, which resulted in 18 million reads, subsequently assembled by de novo method with more than 8000 transcripts in each treatment. The N50 values were 1437, 1467, and 1524 for the control sample, 48 h samples, and 72 h samples, respectively. The gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis resulted in enrichment of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and plant hormone signal transduction pathways under PEG-induced drought conditions. The differential gene expression analysis (DGEs) revealed significant changes in the expression pattern between the control and the treated samples. The KEGG analysis resulted in mapping transcripts with 138 different pathways reported in plants. The differential expression of drought-responsive transcription factors depicts the possible signaling cascades involved in drought tolerance. The present study provides greater insight into the fundamental transcriptome reprogramming of desert plants under drought.
Highlights
H. persicum (Bunge ex Boiss and Buhse), the white saxaul belongs to the family Amaranthaceae, is an extremely drought-tolerant tree species with sand dunes as the habitat
There was a significant decline in fresh weight and dry weight observed when the shoot buds were subjected to polyethylene glycol (PEG) stress for 48 and 72 h
We investigated the transcriptome profile of H. persicum, an endangered desert plant species
Summary
H. persicum (Bunge ex Boiss and Buhse), the white saxaul belongs to the family Amaranthaceae, is an extremely drought-tolerant tree species with sand dunes as the habitat. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), H. persicum is generally found in gravel plains and sand dunes and has a great potential in landscaping. The tree is evergreen in the habitat with the leaves retrogressed as succulent branches of the tree. The trees cover a desert land area of 1 million km across the Turanian deserts and appears in the hot deserts of the Middle East. This species is scattered throughout northwestern China and northern Russia [1].
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