Transcriptome Sequencing of Agave angustifolia Reveals Conservation and Diversification in the Expression of Cinnamyl Alcohol Dehydrogenase Genes in Agave Species

Abstract

Agave angustifolia is an important crassulacean acid metabolism plant species, with wide applications in beverage and sisal fiber production. In this study, we carried out a transcriptome analysis of A. angustifolia leaves, generating a total of 58,482,436 clean reads through Illumina paired-end sequencing. De novo transcriptome assembly generated 67,314 unigenes, with about half of them having homologs in four public databases. In the Nr database, Asparagus officinalis was shown to be most closely related to agave, and the early angiosperm Amborella trichopoda was selected as an outgroup species. We further identified five, two, seven, seven, seven, six and six CAD genes in asparagus, amborella, A. deserti, A. tequilana, A. americana, A. hybrid H11648 and A. angustifolia, respectively. The maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree revealed the species-specific expansion of CAD genes in arabidopsis, rice and agave. The expression analysis indicated the conservatively expressed CAD1/2/4/6, providing candidate targets for manipulation to improve lignin traits. The species-specific expression of CAD3/5/7 indicates the existence of different regulatory mechanisms controlling the expression of these genes in agave species. This study presents the first transcriptome dataset of A. angustifolia, facilitating future studies on lignin biosynthesis in agave.

Transcriptome Sequencing of Agave amaniensis Reveals Shoot-Related Expression Patterns of Expansin A Genes in Agave

“…However, the expressed sequence tags (EST) sequences of agave species were limited and rare in the NCBI database, which influences the understanding of the sisal genome, transcriptome, and the agave fiber development [ 5 ]. Although transcriptomes of A. H11648 [ 5 ], A. angustifolia [ 7 ], A. tequilana , A. sisalana , and A. deserti [ 6 ] were revealed by Illumina Sequencing, and a series of candidate genes were predicted to affect fructans, fiber traits and stress response-related traits, genetic sequence, and transcriptome information about A. amaniensis have not been submitted to GenBank, leaving a knowledge gap in molecular basis.…”

“…Cinnamyl Alcohol Dehydrogenase ( CAD ) genes were also characterized in A. hybrid H11648, A. deserti , A. tequilana , A. americana and A. angustifolia , respectively. The expression analysis indicated that CAD1 , CAD2 , CAD4 and CAD6 were conservatively expressed, which may provide candidate targets for manipulation to improve the lignin properties [ 7 ]. However, the huge genomes and the long growth period of agave make it difficult to use genetic strategies to study the molecular mechanisms of fiber traits [ 8 ].…”

Transcriptome profiling of Nephelium lappaceum: Sodium nitroprusside‐induced delays of postharvest browning

“…From our data, we found that some genes involved in phenolic oxidation (annotated as TYR , Lac , and POD ) showed downregulation (Figure 5A). TYR and Lac are both copper‐containing polyphenol oxidase and they can oxidize phenolic substances to form quinone, which has an important influence on melanin synthesis (Nagai et al, 2003; Yang et al, 2020). Also, it has been shown that litchi laccase functions in the degradation of anthocyanin glycosides in peel browning (Fang et al, 2015).…”