Project description:Intercropping is a sustainable agricultural practice widely used around the world for enhancing resource use efficiency. However, short crops often grow in shade condition underneath the canopy of tall crops. Soybean is one of the most important oil crops and usually is planted in intercropping patterns. However, little is known about the acclimation responses of soybean leaves to shade in intercropping condition at the transcriptome level.
Project description:Tropospheric ozone (O3) is a secondary air pollutant and anthropogenic greenhouse gas. Concentrations of tropospheric O3 have more than doubled since the Industrial Revolution, and are high enough to damage plant productivity. Soybean (Glycine max L. Merr.) is the worldâs most important legume crop and is sensitive to O3. Current ground-level O3 are estimated to reduce global soybean yields by 6% to 16%. In order to understand transcriptional mechanisms of yield loss in soybean, we examined the transcriptome of soybean flower and pod tissues exposed to elevated O3 using RNA-Sequencing.
Project description:Background: Pollen, the male partner in the reproduction of flowering plants, comprises either two or three cells at maturity. The current knowledge of the pollen transcriptome is limited to the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, which has tri-cellular pollen grains at maturity. Comparative studies on pollen of other genera, particularly crop plants, are needed to understand the pollen gene networks that are subject to functional and evolutionary conservation. In this study, we used the Affymetrix Soybean GeneChip® to perform transcriptional profiling on mature bi-cellular soybean pollen. Results: Compared to the sporophyte transcriptome, the soybean pollen transcriptome revealed a restricted and unique repertoire of genes, with a significantly greater proportion of specifically expressed genes than is found in the sporophyte tissue. Comparative analysis shows that, among the 37,500 soybean unique transcripts addressed in this study, 10,299 genes (27.46%) are expressed in pollen. Of the pollen-expressed genes, about 9,489 (92.13%) are also expressed in sporophytic tissues, and 810 (7.87%) are selectively expressed in pollen. Overall, the soybean pollen transcriptome shows an enrichment of transcription factors (mostly zinc finger family proteins), cell cycle-related transcripts, signal recognition receptors, ethylene responsive factors, chromatin remodeling factors, and members of the ubiquitin proteasome proteolytic pathway. Moreover, we identify several new pollen-specific candidate genes that might play a significant role in pollen biology. Conclusion: This is the first report of a soybean pollen transcriptional profile. These data extend our current knowledge regarding regulatory pathways that govern the gene regulation and development of pollen. We also demonstrate that pollen is a rich store of regulatory proteins that are essential and sufficient for de novo gene expression. A comparison between transcription factors up-regulated in soybean and those upregulated in Arabidopsis revealed some divergence in the numbers and kinds of regulatory proteins expressed in both species.
Project description:We conducted a genome-wide transcriptomic analysis in soybean leaves and roots treated with zinc (Zn) deficiency using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) technology. Two biological replicates of RNA-seq were included for Zn-sufficient leaves (ZSL), Zn-deficient leaves (ZDL), Zn-sufficient roots (ZSR), and Zn-deficient roots (ZDR). Therefore a total of eight libraries were constructed. Using a 2-fold change and a P-value ≤0.05 as the cut-off for selecting the differentially expressed transcripts, we globally identified Zn-deficiency responsive genes. At least 20 genes that are potentially involved Zn homeostasis were significantly changed by Zn deficiency, including 7 ZIP (ZRT, IRT-related protein) transporter genes, 3 nicotianamine synthase genes, and 7 metallothionein genes. At least 48 genes encoding likely Zn-binding proteins were found to be responsive to Zn deficiency in leaves or roots. Eighty-five transcription factor genes were significantly changed by Zn deficiency in leaves or roots, including 5 bZIP members and 10 Golden 2-like members. In addition, some other groups of genes which are possibly related to reactive oxygen species scavenging, calcium and hormone signaling, and protein phosphorylation and dephosphorylation also differentially expressed under Zn deficiency.
Project description:RNA-seq was used to characterize gene expression in soybean from a wide range of tissues. The primary focus of the project was small RNAs, and the identification of microRNAs and phased siRNA-generating loci, but RNA-seq data were generated from the same samples. This project was supported by the United Soybean Board.
Project description:Chilling stress is a major factor limiting the yield and quality of vegetable soybean (Glycine max L.) on a global scale. Systematic identification and function analysis of miRNA under chilling stress could be helpful to clarify the molecular mechanism of chilling resistance. In the present study, two independent small RNA libraries from leaves of vegetable soybean were constructed, and sequenced with the high-throughput Illumina Solexa system. A total of 434 known miRNAs and three novel miRNAs were identified. Moreover, the expression patterns of these miRNAs have been verified by qRT-PCR analysis. Furthermore, we identified their gene targets by high-throughput degradome sequencing and validated using 5'-RACE. A total of 898 transcripts were targeted by 54 miRNA families attributed to five categories. More importantly, we identified 55 miRNAs that differentially expressed between chilling stress and the control. The targets of these miRNAs were enriched in oxidation-reduction, signal transduction, and metabolic process functional categories. The qRT-PCR confirmed that there was a negative relationship among the miRNAs and their targets under chilling stress. Our work provides comprehensive molecular evidence for the possible involvement of miRNAs in the process of chilling-stress responses in vegetable soybean.
Project description:Brassinosteroids (BRs) are a series of sterol hormones in plants, which play important physiological roles in many aspects of plant growth and development processes. Exogenous application of BR and its inhibitors PPZ to investigated the roles of BR in soybean root growth and development. Transcriptome sequencing analysis was performed to identified lots number of differential expression genes(DEGs) by eBL (2,4-epicastasterone, 24-epiCS) and PPZ (propiconazole) treatment of soybean root tips(1 cm).
Project description:MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important post-transcriptional regulators of plant development. In soybean (Glycine max), an important edible oil crop, valuable lipids are synthesized and stored in the cotyledons during embryogenesis .This storage lipids are used as energy source of the emerging seeds, during the germination procces. Until now, there are no microRNAs related to lipid metabolism in soybean or any other plant. This work aims to describe the miRNAome of germinating seeds of B. napus by identifying plant-conserved and novel miRNAs and comparing miRNA abundance in mature versus germinating seeds. A total of 183 familes were detected through a computational analysis of a large number of reads obtained from deep sequencing from two small RNA libraries of (i) pooled germintaing seeds stages and (ii) mature soybean seeds. We have found 39 new mirna precursors which produce 41 new mature forms. The present work also have identified isomiRNAs and mirnas offset (moRNAs). This work presents a comprehensive study of the miRNA transcriptome of soybean germinating seeds and will provide a basis for future research on more targeted studies of individual miRNAs and their functions in lipid consumption in development soybean seeds.