Transcript Profile of the Response of Two Soybean Genotypes to Potassium Deficiency

Abstract

The macronutrient potassium (K) is essential to plant growth and development. Crop yield potential is often affected by lack of soluble K. The molecular regulation mechanism of physiological and biochemical responses to K starvation in soybean roots and shoots is not fully understood. In the present study, two soybean varieties were subjected to low-K stress conditions: a low-K-tolerant variety (You06-71) and a low-K-sensitive variety (HengChun04-11). Eight libraries were generated for analysis: 2 genotypes ×2 tissues (roots and shoots) ×2 time periods [short term (0.5 to 12 h) and long term (3 to 12 d)]. RNA derived from the roots and shoots of these two varieties across two periods (short term and long term) were sequenced and the transcriptomes were compared using high-throughput tag-sequencing. To this end, a large number of clean tags (tags used for analysis after removal of dirty tags) corresponding to distinct tags (all types of clean tags) were identified in eight libraries (L1, You06-71-root short term; L2, HengChun04-11-root short term; L3, You06-71-shoot short term; L4, HengChun04-11-shoot short term; L5, You06-71-root long term; L6, HengChun04-11-root long term; L7, You06-71-shoot long term; L8, HengChun04-11-shoot long term). All clean tags were mapped to the available soybean (Glycine max) transcript database (http://www.soybase.org). Many genes showed substantial differences in expression across the libraries. In total, 5,440 transcripts involved in 118 KEGG pathways were either up- or down-regulated. Fifteen genes were randomly selected and their expression levels were confirmed using quantitative RT-PCR. Our results provide preliminary information on the molecular mechanism of potassium absorption and transport under low-K stress conditions in different soybean tissues.

De novo transcriptome analysis of tobacco seedlings and identification of the early response gene network under low-potassium stress

“…The expression level of many genes related to ROS production and detoxification changed in this study, and this result is consistent with previous reports (Wang et al, 2012;Shankar et al, 2013). Among the genes, 3 cytochrome P450s were up-regulated, and P450 can regulate auxin synthesis in Arabidopsis (Bak et al, 2001).…”

Physiological response to potassium deficiency in three sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas [L.] Lam.) genotypes differing in potassium utilization efficiency

“…In K ? -deficient cotton, Wang et al (2012a) and Bednarz et al (1999) observed a reduction in nitrate reductase activity and protein content, whereas the content of amino acids increased. Zhao et al (2001) reported the amount of increased sucrose in K-deficient cotton leaves was much higher than the amount of increased hexose.…”

Identification of the proteins associated with low potassium tolerance in cultivated and Tibetan wild barley

“…Isobaric mass tagging (e.g., TMT and iTRAQ) is a precise and sensitive multiplexed peptide/protein quantification technique in mass spectrometry [22], which has been intensively used for revealing the proteins being differentially expressed under any given conditions, including biotic and abiotic stresses, such as heat stress [23] and Al stress [24]. Recently, some omics methods have been performed on some plants, for instance, rice [25], soybean [26] and watermelon [27], to investigate the underlying tolerance mechanism of plants to K deficiency, mostly at the transcriptional level. The barley proteomics can be mainly summarized as (a) industry driven biotechnology, including seed germination, beer proteomes, and malting proteomes and (b) biology driven proteomics, including abiotic stress tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency [28].…”