Different tobacco cultivation regions lead to variations in tobacco leaf gene expression profiles involved in carbonhydrate metabolism and ion transportation

Abstract

Tobacco is an important crop economically in China, and tobacco quality varies across its cultivated regions. To unveil the mechanisms that result in such varied tobacco leaf qualities, we have analyzed the tobacco leaf gene expression profiles of four areas in Sichuan province, China. Tobacco leaves in the 12 th position were collected from plants in four different regions, namely Huili, Miyi, Xingwen and Jiange, and submitted for microarray analysis. Gene expression levels from Miyi group were used as control, and that from Jiange, Xingwen and Huili were compared to Miyi group respectively. A total of 5154 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were detected, among which 2731 genes were up-regulated and 2423 genes were down-regulated. Based on gene ontology (GO) analysis, significant DEGs were classified into 15 categories (P≤0.05) based on properties pertaining to transferase activity, transmembrane transporter activity, binding, transcription regulator activity, metabolic processes, secondary metabolic processes, etc. Our results also show that these DEGs were significantly enriched in 11 pathways, including metabolic pathways, starch and sucrose metabolism, photosynthesis, etc. Our study suggests that many of the genes involved in various plant physiological and biochemical processes significantly differed across these four different regions, which may explain their differences in tobacco leaf quality.