Abstract
Pongamia pinnata (L.) (Fabaceae) is a promising biofuel tree species which is underexploited in the areas of both fundamental and applied research, due to the lack of information either on transcriptome or genomic data. To investigate the possible metabolic pathways, we performed whole transcriptome analysis of Pongamia through Illumina NextSeq platform and generated 2.8 GB of paired end sequence reads. The de novo assembly of raw reads generated 40,000 contigs and 35,000 transcripts, representing leaf, flower and seed unigenes. Spatial and temporal expression profiles of photoperiod and floral homeotic genes in Pongamia, identified GIGANTEA (GI) - CONSTANS (CO) - FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) as active signal cascade for floral initiation. Four prominent stages of seed development were selected in a high yielding Pongamia accession (TOIL 1) to follow the temporal expression patterns of key fatty acid biosynthetic genes involved in lipid biosynthesis and accumulation. Our results provide insights into an array of molecular events from flowering to seed maturity in Pongamia which will provide substantial basis for modulation of fatty acid composition and enhancing oil yields which should serve as a potential feedstock for biofuel production.
Highlights
Our data provide a comprehensive information on Pongamia transcriptome and temporal expression of candidate genes involved in lipid accumulation and flowering which can be applied to molecular breeding programs for improving the seed oil content in Pongamia
We generated a total of 24 004 632 paired end sequence reads, each 76 bp in length, encompassing about 2.8 GB of sequence data in fastQ format
The number of transcripts were decreased as the length increased with maximum number of transcripts falling in the range of 0–100 bp followed by 100–500 bp
Summary
Besides the floral promotion pathways, mutation studies in Arabidopsis have revealed the existence of genes that repress the floral transition[5] Exploiting these genes through genetic engineering by rendering knowledge obtained from the model plants like Arabidopsis and sequence information obtained from transcriptome will have substantial impact on floral transitions in Pongamia. The whole transcriptome information, together with gene expression patterns of lipid biosynthetic enzymes during seed development and flowering pathway genes, are far from being characterised in Pongamia.
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