Unique features of the m6A methylome and its response to drought stress in sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides Linn.)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In plants, recent studies have revealed that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation of mRNA has potential regulatory functions of this mRNA modification in many biological processes. m6A methyltransferase, m6A demethylase and m6A-binding proteins can cause differential phenotypes, indicating that m6A may have critical roles in the plant. In this study, we depicted the m6A map of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides Linn.) transcriptome. Similar to A. thaliana, m6A sites of sea buckthorn transcriptome is significantly enriched around the stop codon and within 3ʹ-untranslated regions (3ʹUTR). Gene ontology analysis shows that the m6A modification genes are associated with metabolic biosynthesis. In addition, we identified 13,287 different m6A peaks (DMPs) between leaf under drought (TR) and control (CK) treatment. It reveals that m6A has a high level of conservation and has a positive correlation with mRNA abundance in plants. GO and KEGG enrichment results showed that DMP modification DEGs in TR were particularly associated with ABA biosynthesis. Interestingly, our results showed three m6A demethylase (HrALKBH10B, HrALKBH10C and HrALKBH10D) genes were significantly increased following drought stress, which indicated that it may contributed the decreased m6A levels. This exhaustive m6A map provides a basis and resource for the further functional study of mRNA m6A modification in abiotic stress.