Transcriptome-wide profiling and expression analysis of diploid and autotetraploid Paulownia tomentosa × Paulownia fortunei under drought stress

• Published in: PloS one 2014-11, Vol.9 (11), p.e113313-e113313
• Main Authors: Xu, Enkai, Fan, Guoqiang, Niu, Suyan, Zhao, Zhenli, Deng, Minjie, Dong, Yanpeng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abiotic stress; Adaptation, Physiological - genetics; Amino acids; Autotetraploid; Biochemistry; Biology and Life Sciences; Biosynthesis; Carbohydrate metabolism; Carbohydrates; Climate change; Crosses, Genetic; Deciduous trees; Diploidy; Drought; Drought resistance; Droughts; Ecological monitoring; Environmental conditions; Enzymes; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling - methods; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; Gene Ontology; Gene Regulatory Networks - genetics; Gene sequencing; Genomes; Indigenous species; Kinases; Leaves; Magnoliopsida - genetics; Metabolism; Molecular modelling; Paulownia; Paulownia tomentosa; Physiology; Plant growth; Plant hormones; Plant Leaves - genetics; Plant tolerance; Plants (botany); Ploidy; Polyploidy; Proteins; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; Rice; Seedlings; Seedlings - genetics; Signal transduction; Signal Transduction - genetics; Soil sciences; Stress; Stress, Physiological - genetics; Stresses; Studies; Tetraploidy; Transcription; Transcription factors; Transduction; Woody plants
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113313

Paulownia is a fast-growing deciduous hardwood species native to China, which has high ecological and economic value. In an earlier study, we reported ploidy-dependent differences in Paulownia drought tolerance by the microscopic observations of the leaves. Autotetraploid Paulownia has a higher resistance to drought stress than their diploid relatives. In order to obtain genetic information on molecular mechanisms responses of Paulownia plants to drought, Illumina/Solexa Genome sequencing platform was used to de novo assemble the transcriptomes of leaves from diploid and autotetraploid Paulownia tomentosa × Paulownia fortunei seedlings (PTF2 and PTF4 respectively) grown under control conditions and under drought stress and obtained 98,671 nonredundant unigenes. A comparative transcriptome analysis revealed that hundreds of unigenes were predicted to be involved mainly in ROS-scavenging system, amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism, plant hormone biosynthesis and signal transduction, while these unigenes exhibited differential transcript alteration of the two accessions. This study provides a comprehensive map of how P. tomentosa × P. fortunei responds to drought stress at physiological and molecular levels, which may help in understanding the mechanisms involve in water-deficit response and will be useful for further study of drought tolerance in woody plants.