Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis), a high-value bamboo used to produce food (young shoots), building, and industrial goods. To explore key candidate genes regulating signal transduction and metabolic processes during the initiation of stem elongation in moso bamboo, a transcriptome analysis of the shoots during three successive early elongation stages was performed. From cluster and differential expression analyses, 2984 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were selected for an enrichment analysis. The DEGs were significantly enriched in the plant hormone signal transduction, sugar and starch metabolism, and energy metabolism pathways.Consequently, the DEG expression patterns of these pathways were analyzed, and the plant endogenous hormone and carbon metabolite (including sucrose, total soluble sugar, and starch) contents for each growth stage, of the shoot, were determined.The cytokinin-signaling pathway was continuously active in the three successive elongation stages, in which several cytokinin-signaling genes played indispensable roles. Additionally, many key DEGs regulating sugar, starch metabolism, and energy conversion, which are actively involved in energy production and substrate synthesis during the continuous growth of the shoots, were found. In summary, our study lays a foundation for understanding the mechanisms of moso bamboo growth and provides useful gene resources for breeding through genetic engineering.
| INTRODUCTIONAt present, with a growing focus on the environment, the exploration of renewable resources to produce fuel, chemicals, and materials is becoming increasingly important (Matsakas et al., 2019). Thus, the development of fast-growing and high-yield wood resources for energy, chemical, and food products is vital, especially as agricultural and forestry biomass resources (FitzPatrick et al., 2010;Zhang et al., 2011). Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) is highly valuable because of its use food production (juvenile shoots), as building material, and the production of industrial goods. Additionally, it is a highly important and popular bamboo species, having great ecological, economic, and cultural values worldwide owing to its characteristics of easy reproduction, rapid growth, and high productivity (Peng et al., 2010). Understanding the characteristics of its early growth and development will be conducive in order to be able to utilize the moso bamboo resources better.Owing to its extraordinarily rapid growth, moso bamboo has been studied extensively. The rapid growth is largely achieved through cell division and the elongation of the intercalary meristem at the basal