Comparative analysis of potassium deficiency-responsive transcriptomes in low potassium susceptible and tolerant wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Sci Rep. 2015 May 18:5:10090. doi: 10.1038/srep10090.

Abstract

Potassium (K(+)) deficiency as a common abiotic stress can inhibit the growth of plants and thus reduce the agricultural yields. Nevertheless, scarcely any development has been promoted in wheat transcriptional changes under K(+) deficiency. Here we investigated root transcriptional changes in two wheat genotypes, namely, low-K(+) tolerant "Tongzhou916" and low-K(+) susceptible "Shiluan02-1". There were totally 2713 and 2485 probe sets displayed expression changes more than 1.5-fold in Tongzhou916 and Shiluan02-1, respectively. Low-K(+) responsive genes mainly belonged to the categories as follows: metabolic process, cation binding, transferase activity, ion transporters and so forth. We made a comparison of gene expression differences between the two wheat genotypes. There were 1321 and 1177 up-regulated genes in Tongzhou916 and Shiluan02-1, respectively. This result indicated that more genes took part in acclimating to low-K(+) stress in Tongzhou916. In addition, there were more genes associated with jasmonic acid, defense response and potassium transporter up-regulated in Tongzhou916. Moreover, totally 19 genes encoding vacuolar H(+)-pyrophosphatase, ethylene-related, auxin response, anatomical structure development and nutrient reservoir were uniquely up-regulated in Tongzhou916. For their important role in root architecture, K(+) uptake and nutrient storage, unique genes above may make a great contribution to the strong low-K(+) tolerance in Tongzhou916.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Cluster Analysis
  • Computational Biology / methods
  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant*
  • Genes, Plant
  • Genotype
  • Molecular Sequence Annotation
  • Potassium / metabolism
  • Potassium Deficiency / genetics*
  • Potassium Deficiency / metabolism*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Stress, Physiological
  • Transcriptome*
  • Triticum / genetics*
  • Triticum / metabolism*

Substances

  • Potassium