Project description:Comparative analysis of tobacco leaves transcriptomes unveils carotenoid pathway potentially determined the characteristics of aroma compounds in different environmental regions. Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) is a sensitive crop to environmental changes, and a tobacco with unique volatile aroma fractions always formed in specific ecological conditions. In order to investigate the differential expressed genes caused by environmental changes and reveal the formation mechanism of characteristics of tobacco in three different aroma tobacco regions of Guizhou Province, Agilent tobacco microarray was adapted for transcriptome comparison of tobacco leaves in medium aroma tobacco region Kaiyang and light aroma tobacco regions Weining and Tianzhu. Results showed that there was big difference among the gene expression profiles of tobacco leaves in different environmental conditions. A total of 517 differential expressed genes (DEGs) between Weining and Tianzhu were identified, while 733 and 1,005 genes differentially expressed between Longgang and another two tobacco regions Weining and Tianzhu, respectively. Compared with Longgang, up-regulated genes in Weining and Tianzhu were likely involved in secondary metabolism pathways, especially carotenoid pathway, including PHYTOENE SYNTHASE, PHYTOENE DEHYDROGENASE, LYCOPENE ε-CYCLASE, CAROTENOID β-HYDROXYLASE and CAROTENOID CLEAVAGE DIOXYGENASE 1 genes, while most down-regulated genes played important roles in response to temperature and light radiation, such as heat shock proteins. Gene Ontology and MapMan analyses demonstrated that the DEGs among different environmental regions were significantly enriched in light reaction of photosystem II, response of stimulus and secondary metabolism, suggesting they played crucial roles in environmental adaptation and accumulation of aroma compounds in tobacco plants. Through comprehensive transcriptome comparison, we not only identified several stress response genes in tobacco leaves from different environmental regions but also highlighted the importance of carotenoid pathway genes for characteristics of aroma compounds in specific growing regions. Our study primarily laid the foundation for further understanding the molecular mechanism of environmental adaptation of tobacco plants and molecular regulation of aroma substances in tobacco leaves.

Project description:For decades the tobacco plant has served as a model organism in plant biology to answer fundamental biological questions in the areas of plant development, physiology, and genetics. Due to the lack of sufficient coverage of genomic sequences, however, none of the expressed sequence tag (EST)-based chips developed to date cover gene expression from the whole genome. The availability of Tobacco Genome Initiative (TGI) sequences provides a useful resource to build a whole genome exon array, even if the assembled sequences are highly fragmented. Here, the design of a Tobacco Exon Array is reported and an application to improve the understanding of genes regulated by cadmium (Cd) in tobacco is described. From the analysis and annotation of the 1,271,256 Nicotiana tabacum fasta and quality files from methyl filtered genomic survey sequences (GSS) obtained from the TGI and ~56,000 ESTs available in public databases, an exon array with 272,342 probesets was designed (four probes per exon) and tested on two selected tobacco varieties. Two tobacco varieties out of 45 accumulating low and high cadmium in leaf were identified based on the GGE biplot analysis, which is analysis of the genotype main effect (G) plus analysis of the genotype by environment interaction (GE) of eight field trials (four fields over two years) showing reproducibility across the trials. The selected varieties were grown under greenhouse conditions in two different soils and subjected to exon array analyses using root and leaf tissue to understand the genetic make-up of the Cd accumulation. An Affymetrix Exon Array was developed to cover a large (~90%) proportion of the tobacco gene space. The Tobacco Exon Array will be available for research use through the Affymetrix array catalogue. As a proof of the exon array usability, we have demonstrated that the Tobacco Exon Array is a valuable tool for studying Cd accumulation in tobacco leaves. Data from field and greenhouse experiments supported by gene expression studies strongly suggested that the difference in leaf Cd accumulation between the two specific tobacco cultivars is dependent solely on genetic factors and genetic variability rather than on the environment.

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Coated/Uncoated Tobacco Seeds

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