We evaluated a transcriptome using high-throughput Illumina HiSeq sequencing and related it to the morphology, leaf anatomy, and physiological parameters of Carpinus putoensis putoensis under NO2 stress. The molecular mechanism of the C. putoensis NO2 stress response was evaluated using sequencing data. NO2 stress adversely affected the morphology, leaf anatomy, and total peroxidase (POD) activity. Through RNA-seq analysis, we used NCBI to compare the transcripts with nine databases and obtained their functional annotations. We annotated up to 2255 million clean Illumina paired-end RNA-seq reads, and 250,200 unigene sequences were assembled based on the resulting transcriptome data. More than 89% of the C. putoensis transcripts were functionally annotated. Under NO2 stress, 1119 genes were upregulated and 1240 were downregulated. According to the KEGG pathway and GO analyses, photosynthesis, chloroplasts, plastids, and the stimulus response are related to NO2 stress. Additionally, NO2 stress changed the expression of POD families, and the HPL2, HPL1, and POD genes exhibited high expression. The transcriptome analysis of C. putoensis leaves under NO2 stress supplies a reference for studying the molecular mechanism of C. putoensis resistance to NO2 stress. The given transcriptome data represent a valuable resource for studies on plant genes, which will contribute towards genome annotations during future genome projects.
Keywords: NO2 stress; gene expression; high-throughput sequencing; molecular mechanism; resistance; transcriptome.