Abstract
Drought stress can seriously affect tuberization, yield and quality of potato plant. However, the precise molecular mechanisms governing potato stolon’s response to drought stress and water supply are not very well understood. In this work, a potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) variant, Ningshu 4, was subjected to severe drought stress treatment (DT) and re-watering treatment (RWT) at tuber bulking stage. Strand-specific cDNA libraries of stolon materials were constructed for paired-end transcriptome sequencing analyses and differentially expressed gene (DEG) examination. In comparison to untreated-control (CT) plants, 3189 and 1797 DEGs were identified in DT and RWT plants and 4154 solely expressed DEGs were screened out from these two comparison groups. Interestingly, 263 genes showed opposite expression patterns in DT and RWT plants. Among them, genes homologous to Protein Phosphatase 2C (PP2C), Aspartic protease in guard cell 1 (ASPG1), auxin-responsive protein, Arabidopsis pseudo response regualtor 2 (APRR2), GA stimulated transcripts in Arabidopsis 6 (GASA6), Calmodulin-like protein 19 (CML19), abscisic acid 8'-hydroxylases and calcium-transporting ATPase, et al. were related with drought-stress and water stimulus response. Sixteen DEGs involved in starch synthesis, accumulation and tuber formation exhibited significantly different expression upon re-watering. In addition, 1630, 1527 and 1596 transcription factor encoding genes were detected in CT, DT and RWT. DEGs of ERF, bHLH, MYB, NAC, WRKY, C2H2, bZIP and HD-ZIP families accounted for 50% in three comparison groups, respectively. Furthermore, characteristics of 565 gene ontology (GO) and 108 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways (KEGG) were analyzed with the 4154 DEGs. All these results suggest that the drought- and water-stimulus response could be implemented by the regulated expression of metabolic pathway DEGs, and these genes were involved in the endogenous hormone biosynthesis and signal transduction pathways. Our data provide more direct information for future study on the interaction between key genes involved in various metabolic pathways under drought stress in potato.
Highlights
Global climate change is reducing the reliability of rainfall, the availability of soil-water, and limiting plant production
A total of 78448498, 74764759, and 71081020 raw reads were obtained from CT, drought stress treatment (DT), and re-watering treatment (RWT) cDNA libraries, respectively
Of the identified differentially expressed gene (DEG), 263 of them exhibited opposite expression patterns between the two comparison treatments CT vs. DT and CT vs. RWT (S3 Table), that is, transcripts that were regulated in an opposite direction in DT and RWT compared to CT
Summary
Global climate change is reducing the reliability of rainfall, the availability of soil-water, and limiting plant production. Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) ranks as the fourth most predominant non-grain food crop in the world. Due to their shallow root system, which limits water extraction from soil, potato plants are sensitive to drought stress. Fast and efficient recovery from water stress will allow agricultural crops to adapt to the changes of meteorological conditions and maximize their growth and production during drought stress. Data currently available on transcriptomic changes upon rehydration in potato is insufficient, and the precise pathways involved in drought responses and recovery from water deficit still remain to be deduced
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