The Dynamics of Flower Development in Castanea sativa Mill.

Abstract

The sweet chestnut tree (Castanea sativa Mill.) is one of the most significant Mediterranean tree species, being an important natural resource for the wood and fruit industries. It is a monoecious species, presenting unisexual male catkins and bisexual catkins, with the latter having distinct male and female flowers. Despite the importance of the sweet chestnut tree, little is known regarding the molecular mechanisms involved in the determination of sexual organ identity. Thus, the study of how the different flowers of C. sativa develop is fundamental to understand the reproductive success of this species and the impact of flower phenology on its productivity. In this study, a C. sativa de novo transcriptome was assembled and the homologous genes to those of the ABCDE model for floral organ identity were identified. Expression analysis showed that the C. sativa B- and C-class genes are differentially expressed in the male flowers and female flowers. Yeast two-hybrid analysis also suggested that changes in the canonical ABCDE protein–protein interactions may underlie the mechanisms necessary to the development of separate male and female flowers, as reported for the monoecious Fagaceae Quercus suber. The results here depicted constitute a step towards the understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in unisexual flower development in C. sativa, also suggesting that the ABCDE model for flower organ identity may be molecularly conserved in the predominantly monoecious Fagaceae family.

Genome‐wide identification, phylogeny, and gene duplication of the epigenetic regulators in Fagaceae

“…The validation of transcriptome assemblies was done using Benchmarking Universal Single‐Copy Orthologs (BUSCO; Simão et al, 2015 ), a part of the OmicsBox (v. 2.0; https://www.biobam.com/omicsbox/ ). We used the transcriptome assembled by Alhinho et al ( 2021 ) for Castanea sativa Mill., the protein library Castanea dentata —Transcriptome Assembly AC454_v3 for Castanea dentata (Marshall) Borkh. Retrieved from Hardwood Genomics ( https://hardwoodgenomics.org/ ), and for Q. robur the OCV3 transcriptome available on the Quercus Portal ( https://quercusportal.pierroton.inra.fr/ ).…”

“…The validation of transcriptome assemblies was done using Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs (BUSCO; Simão et al, 2015), a part of the OmicsBox (v. 2.0; https://www.biobam.com/omicsbox/). We used the transcriptome assembled by Alhinho et al (2021) (Hall, 2011). The nomenclature used to describe genes follows the one of A. thaliana: the sequences with higher similarity received the same designation, whereas other less similar received the name "-like."…”

Morphological charactieristics of pollen grains in selected group of honey plants

“…Kvety sa vyvíjajú až po olistení (Benčať et al, 2006). Druh je monoecický (jednodomý) a protandrický (skôr dozrieva peľ) (Alhinho et al, 2021). Samčie kvety vzpriamených jahňadách 100-200 mm dlhých s drobnými kvetmi nesúcimi 9 -20 tyčiniek.…”

Transcription Factor and Zeatin Co-Regulate Mixed Catkin Differentiation of Chinese Chestnut (Castanea mollissima)

“…Castanea is mainly planted in Hebei, Shandong, and Hubei provinces in China, which is one of the major producing countries, with a total planting area of over one million acres [17]. Castanea is rich in nutrients with edible nuts and timber value [18,19]. As a monoecious tree, the yield is not stable due to an imbalance in the ratio of male and female flowers.…”