Abstract
Pine wilt disease caused by pine wood nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, PWN) is a severe forest disease of the genus Pinus. Masson pine as an important timber and oleoresin resource in South China, is the major species infected by pine wilt disease. However, the underlying mechanism of pine resistance is still unclear. Here, we performed a transcriptomics analysis to identify differentially expressed genes associated with resistance to PWN infection. By comparing the expression profiles of resistant and susceptible trees inoculated with PWN at 1, 15, or 30 days post-inoculation (dpi), 260, 371 and 152 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in resistant trees and 756, 2179 and 398 DEGs in susceptible trees were obtained. Gene Ontology enrichment analysis of DEGs revealed that the most significant biological processes were “syncytium formation” in the resistant phenotype and “response to stress” and “terpenoid biosynthesis” in the susceptible phenotype at 1 and 15 dpi, respectively. Furthermore, some key DEGs with potential regulatory roles to PWN infection, including expansins, pinene synthases and reactive oxidation species (ROS)-related genes were evaluated in detail. Finally, we propose that the biosynthesis of oleoresin and capability of ROS scavenging are pivotal to the high resistance of PWN.
Highlights
Control measure, and this method has been used in many countries, such as Japan, China, and Portugal[10,11,12]
We found that a small number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were induced by PWN in resistant trees compared to susceptible trees at each time point
We found that the number of DEGs was highest at 15 dpi and least at 30 dpi in both resistant and susceptible trees, and more DEGs were down-regulated in the susceptible phenotype at the three time points
Summary
Control measure, and this method has been used in many countries, such as Japan, China, and Portugal[10,11,12]. 1201 resistant individuals were selected from masson pines[10], which provided valuable resources for understanding the mechanism of resistance to PWN. The anatomical and biochemical changes of pine trees with PWN infection have been characterized over the past 40 years[13]. Different pine species have different defense mechanisms against PWN23. Only a few studies on the resistance mechanism of masson pine against PWN at the transcriptome level have been reported. The successful defense mechanism against PWN remains unclear in masson pine. Next-generation high-throughput sequencing is a powerful tool to identify differential transcripts from whole genome under different conditions In this study, this method was used to characterize the difference in the transcript profiles of resistant and susceptible pines after PWN inoculation. This work provides comprehensive gene resources underlying PWN tolerance and could facilitate the genetic breeding process of valuable masson pines
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