Transcriptomic analysis of developing embryos of apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.)

Abstract

Apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) is an important, nutritionally valuable agricultural crop. A scarcity of transcriptomic and genomic data hinders progress toward understanding the molecular events of apricot embryogenesis, which is the primary determinant of fruit yield and kernel quality. In this study, three cDNA libraries were sequenced using an Illumina/Solexa platform. We obtained 35,928,496, 40,656,940, and 35,970,214 clean reads from endosperm formation (LT-A), embryo development (LT-B), and mature embryo (LT-C) cDNA libraries, respectively. De novo assembly of cDNA sequence data generated 35,614 unigenes with an average length of 973 bp. A total of 29,971 unigenes were matched in Nr, Nt, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, GO, and COG databases. The top matching species in the Nr database was P. persica (88.3% of matched Nr database accessions). A total of 8,327 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected between LT-A and LT-B, of which 3,663 were upregulated and 4,664 were downregulated. Between LT-B and LT-C, 12,673 DEGs were detected, while 13,892 DEGs were uncovered between LT-A and LT-C. This work is the first reported application of next-generation sequencing techniques for transcriptome analysis of apricot embryo development. Besides providing valuable information on apricot embryo development, the comprehensive set of transcript sequences generated in this study may serve as additional molecular resources for the development of apricot functional genomics.