Transcriptome profiling unveils the mechanism of phenylpropane biosynthesis in rhizome development of Caucasian clover

Lingdong Meng; Xiaomeng Zhang; Lina Wang; Haoyue Liu; Yihang Zhao; Kun Yi; Guowen Cui; Xiujie Yin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0254669

Transcriptome profiling unveils the mechanism of phenylpropane biosynthesis in rhizome development of Caucasian clover

PLoS One. 2021 Jul 13;16(7):e0254669. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254669. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Lingdong Meng¹, Xiaomeng Zhang¹, Lina Wang¹, Haoyue Liu¹, Yihang Zhao¹, Kun Yi¹, Guowen Cui¹, Xiujie Yin¹

Affiliation

¹ College of Animal Science and Technology, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, China.

Abstract

Caucasian clover is the only perennial herb of the genus Leguminous clover with underground rhizomes. However, we know very little about its development process and mechanism. Transcriptome studies were conducted on the roots of Caucasian clover without a rhizome (NR) at the young seedling stage and the fully developed rhizome, including the root neck (R1), main root (R2), horizontal root (R3), and rhizome bud (R4), of the tissues in the mature phase. Compared with the rhizome in the mature phase, NR had 893 upregulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs), most of which were enriched in 'phenylpropanoid biosynthesis', 'phenylalanine metabolism', 'DNA replication' and 'biosynthesis of amino acids'. A higher number of transcription factors (AP2/ERF, C2H2 and FAR1) were found in NR. There were highly expressed genes for R4, such as auxin response factor SAUR, galacturonosyltransferase (GAUT), and sucrose synthase (SUS). Phenylpropanoids are very important for the entire process of rhizome development. We drew a cluster heat map of genes related to the phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway, in which the largest number of genes belonged to COMT, and most of them were upregulated in R4.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Gene Expression Profiling
Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / genetics
Medicago / genetics*
Rhizome / genetics
Transcriptome / genetics*
Trifolium / genetics

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31802120) (http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/english/site_1/index.html), Research and Demonstration of Large-scale Artificial Grassland Combined Plant and Circular Mode (2017YFD0502106) and Academic Backbone Fund Project of Northeast Agricultural University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.