Transcriptomic Analysis of Betula halophila in Response to Salt Stress

作   者：邵芬娟, 张立莎, Wilson IW, 邱德有
期刊名称：International Journal of Molecular Sciences
影响因子：3.687
卷 期 号：19
页     码：3412
关键词：Betula halophile, salt stress, transcriptomes
论文摘要：
Soil salinization is a matter of concern worldwide. It can eventually lead to the desertification of land and severely damage local agricultural production and the ecological environment. Betula halophila is a tree with high salt tolerance, so it is of importance to understand and discover the salt responsive genes of B. halophila for breeding salinity resistant varieties of trees. However, there is no report on the transcriptome in response to salt stress in B. halophila.
Using Illumina sequencing platform, approximately 460 M raw reads were generated and assembled
into 117,091 unigenes. Among these unigenes, 64,551 unigenes (55.12%) were annotated with gene
descriptions, while the other 44.88% were unknown. 168 up-regulated genes and 351 down-regulated
genes were identified, respectively. These Differentially Expressed Genes (DEGs) involved in multiple pathways including the Salt Overly Sensitive (SOS) pathway, ion transport and uptake, antioxidant enzyme, ABA signal pathway and so on. The gene ontology (GO) enrichments suggested that the DEGs were mainly involved in a plant-type cell wall organization biological process, cell wall cellular component, and structural constituent of cell wall molecular function. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment showed that the top-four enriched pathways were ‘Fatty acid elongation’, ‘Ribosome’, ‘Sphingolipid metabolism’ and ‘Flavonoid biosynthesis’. The expression patterns of sixteen DEGs were analyzed by qRT-PCR to verify the RNA-seq data. Among them, the transcription factor AT-Hook Motif Nuclear Localized gene and dehydrins might play an important role in response to salt stress in B. halophila. Our results provide an important gene resource to breed salt tolerant plants and useful information for further elucidation of the molecular mechanism of salt tolerance in B. halophila