Transcriptome reprogramming during severe dehydration contributes to physiological and metabolic changes in the resurrection plant Haberlea rhodopensis.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Water shortage is a major factor that harms agriculture and ecosystems worldwide. Plants display various levels of tolerance to water deficit, but only resurrection plants can survive full desiccation of their vegetative tissues. Haberlea rhodopensis, an endemic plant of the Balkans, is one of the few resurrection plants found in Europe. We performed transcriptomic analyses of this species under slight, severe and full dehydration and recovery to investigate the dynamics of gene expression and associate them with existing physiological and metabolomics data. RESULTS:De novo assembly yielded a total of 142,479 unigenes with an average sequence length of 1034?nt. Among them, 18,110 unigenes were differentially expressed. Hierarchical clustering of all differentially expressed genes resulted in seven clusters of dynamic expression patterns. The most significant expression changes, involving more than 15,000 genes, started at severe dehydration (~?20% relative water content) and were partially maintained at full desiccation (

SUBMITTER: Liu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6291977 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature