Identification of the invertase gene family (INVs) in tea plant and their expression analysis under abiotic stress

Abstract

Fourteen invertase genes were identified in the tea plant, all of which were shown to participate in regulating growth and development, as well as in responding to various abiotic stresses. Invertase (INV) can hydrolyze sucrose into glucose and fructose, which plays a principal role in regulating plant growth and development as well as the plants response to various abiotic and biotic stresses. However, currently, there is a lack of reported information, regarding the roles of INVs in either tea plant development or in the tea plants response to various stresses. In this study, 14 INV genes were identified from the transcriptome data of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze), and named CsINV1-5 and CsINV7-15. Based on the results of a Blastx search and phylogenetic analysis, the CsINV genes could be clustered into 6 acid invertase (AI) genes and 8 alkaline/neutral invertase (A/N-Inv) genes. The results of tissue-specific expression analysis showed that the transcripts of all the identified CsINV genes are detectable in various tissues. Under various abiotic stress conditions, the expression patterns of the 14 CsINV genes were diverse in both the leaves and roots, and some of them were shown to be significantly expressed. Overall, we hypothesize that the identified CsINV genes all participate in regulating growth and development in the tea plant, and most likely through different signaling pathways that regulate the carbohydrate allocation and the ratio of hexose and sucrose for improving the resistance of the leaves and the roots of the tea plant to various abiotic stresses.

CsINV5, a tea vacuolar invertase gene enhances cold tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis

“…Direct evidence was provided by Wang and Ruan [ 16 ]; silencing a VIN gene, GhVIN1 , in cotton reproductive organs reduced viable seed production due to pollination failure and impaired male and female fertility. In our study, the promoter of CsINV5 showed the highest GUS activity in mature pollen of transgenic Arabidopsis , and this result is consistent with the tissue-specific expression pattern of CsINV5 in the tea plant, where we previously found the transcription abundance of CsINV5 in flowers of ‘LJ43’ cultivar is nearly 90-fold than that in roots [ 38 ]. Thus, CsINV5 may exert strong control over reproduction from male and female fertility to floral development, but the mechanism remains to be explored.…”

“…Numerous of physiological, biochemical and molecular are changed during CA, including the remodeling of cell and tissue structures, the reprogramming of metabolism and gene expression [ 32 ]. In tea plant, previous studies showed that the expression level of CsINV5 was increased 3 times in ‘LJ43’ cultivar when they exposed to a non-freezing low temperatures (4 °C) for 5 days as compared to the normal cultivated ‘LJ43’ cultivar [ 38 ]. In addition, the expression of CsINV5 was also significantly induced by natural CA process [ 42 ].…”

“…Afterwards, Yue et al [ 42 ] further verified this hypothesis, finding that 59 sugar-related genes induced by low temperature, particularly a putative INV gene, CsINV5 , which showed more than 100-fold higher expression during CA than before or after CA. The expression levels of CsINV5 was also elevated at least 3-fold in leaves and 2-fold in roots of tea plant after 5 days of low nonfreezing temperature (4 °C) treatment as compared to normal cultivated tea plant [ 38 ], indicating that CsINV5 may play an important role in cold stress response.…”

Genome-wide identification, characterization, and expression analysis of tea plant autophagy-related genes (CsARGs) reveals diverse roles during development and abiotic stress

“…Before treatments, all seedlings were cultured in growth chamber under the following growth conditions: temperature, 23 ± 0.5 °C; lighting time, 14 h/10 h (light/dark); and humidity, 75%. The cuttings with the same growth potential were used to process different treatments as described by Qian et al (2016) [46] with some modi ed. For cold treatment (CT), the temperature of the growth chamber was plummeted to 4 °C without changing any other growth conditions.…”

“…For example, multiple omics techniques, including transcriptome, proteomic and metabonome have been widely used for exploring the dynamic changes of genes, proteins and the metabolites under different stress conditions [36][37][38][39][40]. In addition, many genes, which in responding to various stimulus, have been identi ed and analyzed by feat of the daft genome sequences [41][42][43][44][45][46], meanwhile, the functional studies of some difference expressed genes (DEGs), like Basic leucine zipper (bZIP) gene (CsbZIP6) [47], SWEET transporters gene (CsSWEET16) [48], vacuolar invertases gene (CsINV5) [49], and 12-Oxophytodienoate reductase gene (CsOPR3) [50], have been extensively studied. However, there has no one autophagy-related gene (ARG) been comprehensively analyzed in tea plant, and the roles of autophagy in coping with different environment stimuluses have also not yet been detailed in tea plant.…”