Integrative analyses of morphology, physiology, and transcriptional expression profiling reveal miRNAs involved in culm color in bamboo

Chenglei Zhu; Yongfeng Lou; Kebin Yang; Yan Liu; Xiaoyan Xiao; Ziyang Li; Dong Guo; Huayu Sun; Zhimin Gao

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.992794

Integrative analyses of morphology, physiology, and transcriptional expression profiling reveal miRNAs involved in culm color in bamboo

Front Plant Sci. 2022 Sep 9:13:992794. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.992794. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Chenglei Zhu^{1

2}, Yongfeng Lou³, Kebin Yang^{1

2}, Yan Liu^{1

2}, Xiaoyan Xiao^{1

2}, Ziyang Li^{1

2}, Dong Guo^{1

2}, Huayu Sun^{1

2}, Zhimin Gao^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of National Forestry and Grassland Administration/Beijing for Bamboo and Rattan Science and Technology, Beijing, China.
² Institute of Gene Science and Industrialization for Bamboo and Rattan Resources, International Center for Bamboo and Rattan, Beijing, China.
³ Jiangxi Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology, Jiangxi Academy of Forestry, Nanchang, China.

Abstract

Culm color variation is an interesting phenomenon that contributes to the breeding of new varieties of ornamental plants during domestication. De-domesticated variation is considered ideal for identifying and interpreting the molecular mechanisms of plant mutations. However, the variation in culm color of bamboo remains unknown. In the present study, yellow and green culms generated from the same rhizome of Phyllostachys vivax cv. Aureocaulis (P. vivax) were used to elucidate the molecular mechanism of culm color formation. Phenotypic and physiological data showed that environmental suitability was higher in green culms than in yellow culms. High-throughput sequencing analysis showed 295 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and 22 differentially expressed miRNAs (DEMs) in two different colored bamboo culms. There were 103 DEM-DEG interaction pairs, of which a representative "miRNA-mRNA" regulatory module involved in photosynthesis and pigment metabolism was formed by 14 DEM-DEG pairs. The interaction of the three key pairs was validated by qPCR and dual-luciferase assays. This study provides new insights into the molecular mechanism of miRNAs involved in P. vivax culm color formation, which provides evidence for plant de-domestication and is helpful for revealing the evolutionary mechanism of bamboo.

Keywords: Phyllostachys vivax cv. Aureocaulis; comparative transcriptome; culm color; de-domestication; miRNA-mRNA networks.