Background Wheat yellow dwarf virus disease is infected by barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV), which causes leaf yellowing and dwarfing symptoms in wheat, thereby posing a serious threat to China's food production. The infection of plant viruses can produce large numbers of vsiRNAs, which can target host transcripts and cause symptom development. However, few studies have been conducted to explore the role played by vsiRNAs in the interaction between BYDV-GAV and host wheat plants. Methods In this study, small RNA sequencing was conducted to profile vsiRNAs in BYDV-GAV-infected wheat plants. The putative targets of vsiRNAs were predicted by the bioinformatics software psRNATarget. RT-qPCR and VIGS were employed to identify the function of selected target transcripts. To confirm the interaction between vsiRNA and the target, 5′ RACE was performed to analyze the specific cleavage sites. Results From the sequencing data, we obtained a total of 11,384 detected vsiRNAs. The length distribution of these vsiRNAs was mostly 21 and 22 nt, and an A/U bias was observed at the 5′ terminus. We also observed that the production region of vsiRNAs had no strand polarity. The vsiRNAs were predicted to target 23,719 wheat transcripts. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis demonstrated that these targets were mostly involved in cell components, catalytic activity and plant-pathogen interactions. The results of RT-qPCR analysis showed that most chloroplast-related genes were downregulated in BYDV-GAV-infected wheat plants. Silencing of a chlorophyll synthase gene caused leaf yellowing that was similar to the symptoms exhibited by BYDV-GAV-inoculated wheat plants. A vsiRNA from an overlapping region of BYDV-GAV MP and CP was observed to target chlorophyll synthase for gene silencing. Next, 5′ RACE validated that vsiRNA8856 could cleave the chlorophyll synthase transcript in a sequence-specific manner. Conclusions This report is the first to demonstrate that BYDV-GAV-derived vsiRNAs can target wheat transcripts for symptom development, and the results of this study help to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying leaf yellowing after viral infection.

Although Psathyrostachys huashanica has excellent potential for resistance gene mining and molecular genetic breeding, no reference genome is available. To date, most studies of P. huashanica have been focused on the creation of translocation lines and additional lines, as well as the development of molecular markers. Therefore, research at the transcriptional level is lacking. In this study, the full-length transcriptome of P. huashanica was sequenced using PacBio isoform sequencing (Iso-Seq) of a pooled RNA sample to explore the potential full-length transcript isoforms. We obtained 112,596 unique transcript isoforms with a total length of 114,957,868 base pairs (bp). Subsequently, Illumina sequencing reads were used to correct and trim the PacBio isoforms. We annotated 103,875 unigenes in at least one functional database, and identified a plethora of differentially-expressed genes (DEGs) that are involved in the defense responses of P. huashanica against barley yellow dwarf virus-GAV (BYDV-GAV). Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis revealed that these DEGs were mostly involved in plant-pathogen interaction, plant hormone signal transduction, and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway. Additionally, we selected twenty of the RNA-seq identified resistance-related up-regulated genes, including MAPKs, cysteine-rich receptor-like protein kinases (CRPKs), calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs), pathogenesis-related protein (PR) proteins, WRKYs, and disease resistance proteins, and validated their up-regulation in response to BYDV-GAV by quantitative real-time PCR. Our results indicate that a series of defense-related genes were induced in P. huashanica during BYDV-GAV infection. The full-length transcriptome dataset will contribute to improved use of stress-resistance genes of P. huashanica, and serves as a reference database for the analysis of transcript expression in P. huashanica.

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