Physiology and transcriptomics highlight the underlying mechanism of sunflower responses to drought stress and rehydration

Jie Shen; Xi Wang; Huifang Song; Mingyang Wang; Tianzeng Niu; Haiying Lei; Cheng Qin; Ake Liu

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.108112

Physiology and transcriptomics highlight the underlying mechanism of sunflower responses to drought stress and rehydration

iScience. 2023 Oct 2;26(11):108112. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.108112. eCollection 2023 Nov 17.

Authors

Jie Shen¹, Xi Wang¹, Huifang Song¹, Mingyang Wang², Tianzeng Niu¹, Haiying Lei¹, Cheng Qin¹, Ake Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Life Sciences, Changzhi University, Changzhi 046011, China.
² School of Life Science, Shanxi Normal University, Taiyuan 030031, China.

Abstract

Drought can adversely influence the crop growth and production. Accordingly, sunflowers have strong adaptability to drought; hence, we conducted analyses for sunflower seedlings with drought stress and rehydration drought acclimation through physiological measurements and transcriptomics. It showed that drought can cause the accumulation of ROS and enhance the activity of antioxidant enzymes and the content of osmolytes. After rehydration, the contents of ROS and MDA were significantly reduced concomitant with increased antioxidant activity and osmotic adjustment. Totally, 2,589 DEGs were identified among treatments. Functional enrichment analysis showed that DEGs were mainly involved in plant hormone signal transduction, MAPK signaling, and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. Comparison between differentially spliced genes and DEGs indicated that bHLH025, NAC53, and SINAT3 may be pivotal genes involved in sunflower drought resistance. Our results not only highlight the underlying mechanism of drought stress and rehydration in sunflower but also provide a theoretical basis for crop genetic breeding.

Keywords: Plant biology; Plant physiology; Transcriptomics.