De novo transcriptome analysis of Viola ×wittrockiana exposed to high temperature stress

PLoS One. 2019 Sep 24;14(9):e0222344. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0222344. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Around the world, pansies are one of the most popular garden flowers, but they are generally sensitive to high temperatures, and this limits the practicality of planting them during the warmest days of the year. However, a few pansy germplasms with improved heat tolerance have been discovered or bred, but the mechanisms of their heat resistance are not understood. In this study, we investigated the transcript profiles of a heat-tolerant pansy inbred line, DFM16, in response to high temperatures using RNAseq. Approximately 55.48 Gb of nucleotide data were obtained and assembled into 167,576 unigenes with an average length of 959 bp, of which, 5,708 genes were found to be differentially expressed after heat treatments. Real-time qPCR was performed to validate the expression profiles of the selected genes. Nine metabolic pathways were found to be significantly enriched, in the analysis of the differentially expressed genes. Several potentially interesting genes that encoded putative transcription regulators or key components involving heat shock protein (HSP), heat shock transcription factors (HSF), and antioxidants biosynthesis, were identified. These genes were highlighted to indicate their significance in response to heat stress and will be used as candidate genes to improve pansy heat-tolerance in the future.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Gene Expression Profiling
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / physiology
  • Genes, Plant / genetics
  • Genes, Plant / physiology
  • Heat-Shock Response
  • Hot Temperature / adverse effects
  • Phenotype
  • Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • Seedlings / metabolism
  • Seedlings / physiology
  • Transcriptome / genetics
  • Viola / genetics
  • Viola / metabolism*
  • Viola / physiology

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by the International Science and Technology Cooperation Research Programme of Henan Province (Grant No. 182102410029) and Key Scientific Research Projects of Institutions of Higher Education of Henan Province (Grant No. 19A210011).