Transcriptional Profiling and Identification of Heat-Responsive Genes in Perennial Ryegrass by RNA-Sequencing

Abstract

Perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) is one of the most widely used forage and turf grasses in the world due to its desirable agronomic qualities. However, as a cool-season perennial grass species, high temperature is a major factor limiting its performance in warmer and transition regions. In this study, a de novo transcriptome was generated using a cDNA library constructed from perennial ryegrass leaves subjected to short-term heat stress treatment. Then the expression profiling and identification of perennial ryegrass heat response genes by digital gene expression analyses was performed. The goal of this work was to produce expression profiles of high temperature stress responsive genes in perennial ryegrass leaves and further identify the potentially important candidate genes with altered levels of transcript, such as those genes involved in transcriptional regulation, antioxidant responses, plant hormones and signal transduction, and cellular metabolism. The de novo assembly of perennial ryegrass transcriptome in this study obtained more total and annotated unigenes compared to previously published ones. Many DEGs identified were genes that are known to respond to heat stress in plants, including HSFs, HSPs, and antioxidant related genes. In the meanwhile, we also identified four gene candidates mainly involved in C4 carbon fixation, and one TOR gene. Their exact roles in plant heat stress response need to dissect further. This study would be important by providing the gene resources for improving heat stress tolerance in both perennial ryegrass and other cool-season perennial grass plants.

Transcriptomic Responses of Dove Tree (Davidia involucrata Baill.) to Heat Stress at the Seedling Stage

“…With respect to the molecular function category, "binding" (19,041 unigenes) and "catalytic activity" (14,935 unigenes) were mostly assigned. Consistent with our results, the aforementioned most highly represented GO terms were also observed in transcriptome analyses of other plant species under heat stress [31,32,43]. Those groups of "nucleic acid binding transcription factor activity" (1097 unigenes), "signaling" (2374 unigenes), "transporter activity" (2468 unigenes), and "response to stimulus" (4699 unigenes) have been implicated in plant stress responses, but with lower numbers of assigned unigenes.…”

“…The comprehensive transcriptomic analysis of Korean fir (Abies koreana) revealed many Hsps and transcription factors as being differentially expressed upon heat treatment [31]. In addition to the previously described heat stress regulators, the transcriptional profiling of perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne) under heat stress also identified four genes primarily involved in C 4 carbon fixation as well as one target of rapamycin (TOR) gene [32]. In maize (Zea mays), a transcriptome analysis highlights the crucial roles of the protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum pathway in heat stress response [33].…”

“…Heat stress is initially perceived by the leaf, which subsequently brings about physiological and biochemical alterations at the whole plant level [50,51]. Moreover, researchers have expended a lot of effort on studying heat response mechanisms in leaf tissues, including analyses of heat-induced leaf transcriptome changes [20,30,32,33,43]. Therefore, healthy mature leaves of approximately the same size were used for the transcriptome analysis of heat stress response in D. involucrata.…”

Proteome and Transcriptome Reveal Involvement of Heat Shock Proteins and Indoleacetic Acid Metabolism Process in Lentinula Edodes Thermotolerance

“…According to our results, it was documented that the expression of the HSF_DNA-bind gene was obviously downregulated in the thermotolerant strain S606 after heat stress, which indicated that L. edodes tolerance to heat stress could be negatively controlled by HSF_DNA-bind. Besides, many genes encoding other transcription factors including in bHLH, Myb and C 2 H 2 (Zinc finger family protein) regulated significantly in plant after heat stress [67,68], were among the up-or down-regulated (Table S5). Additionally, the gene expression and protein levels of the BAG gene were dramatically induced and upregulated.…”

MiR319 mediated salt tolerance by ethylene

“…Clean data were obtained from raw data after removing adapters or poly‐N and other low‐quality reads. Under the criteria of an adjusted P ‐value < 0.05, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between WT and OE‐miR319 plants were analysed as previously reported (Wang et al ., ). Ten genes were selected to verify their expression levels in the transcriptome by qRT‐PCR using the primers listed in Table S1.…”