Background: Ramet propagation in strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) is the most effective way in production. However, the lack of systematically phenotypic observations and high-throughput methods limits our ability to analyze the key factors regulating the heterogeneity in strawberry stolon buds.
Results: From observation, we found that the axillary bud located in the first node quickly stepped into dormancy (DSB), after several bract and leaf buds were differentiated. The stolon apical meristem (SAM) degenerated as the new ramet leaf buds (RLB) and the new active axillary stolon buds (ASB) differentiated continually, after the differentiation of the first leaf. Using tandem mass tags (TMT) labeling method, totally 7,271 strawberry proteins were identified, and were used for further bioinformatics analysis in differentially expressed proteins (DEPs) between the groups of ASB and DSB, RLB and DSB, and RLB and ASB. Between ASB and DSB, the spliceosome DEPs, such as Ser/Arg-rich (SR) and heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle (hnRNP), showed the highest enrichment and high PPI connectivity. This indicated that the differences in DEPs (e.g., SF-3A subunit 2 isoform X1, hnRBP C1827.05c, and PK, cytosolic isozyme) at the transcriptional level may be causing the differences between the physiological statuses of ASB and DSB. As expected, the photosynthetic pre-form RLB mainly differentiated from ASB and DSB judging by the DEP enrichment of photosynthesis. However, there are still other specialized features of DEPs between RLB and DSB and between ASB and DSB. The DEPs relative to DNA duplication [e.g., minichromosome maintenance protein (MCM 2, 3, 4, 7)], provide a strong hint of functional gene duplication leading the bud heterogeneity between RLB and DSB. In addition, the top fold change in DEP LSH 10-like protein might be involved in the degeneration of SAM into RLBs. As for RLB/ASB, the phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway probably regulates the ramet axillary bud specialization, and further promotes the differentiation of xylem when ASB develops into a new stolon [e.g., cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase 1 (CAD1) and phenylalanine ammonia-lyase 1 (PAL1)].
Conclusions: The definite dormancy phase of DSB, and the biological pathways and gene networks that might be responsible for stolon buds heterogeneity were also revealed.