Transcriptome Analysis of a Cotton Cultivar Provides Insights into the Differentially Expressed Genes Underlying Heightened Resistance to the Devastating Verticillium Wilt

• Published in: Cells (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 10; no. 11; p. 2961
• Main Authors: Zhu, He, Song, Jian, Dhar, Nikhilesh, Shan, Ying, Ma, Xi-Yue, Wang, Xiao-Lei, Chen, Jie-Yin, Dai, Xiao-Feng, Li, Ran, Wang, Zi-Sheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 30.10.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Binding sites; Biosynthesis; Cotton; Cultivars; Defense mechanisms; disease resistance; Disease Resistance - genetics; Flowers & plants; Gene expression; Gene Expression Profiling; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; Gene Ontology; gene regulatory networks; Gossypium - genetics; Gossypium - microbiology; Gossypium hirsutum; Host-Pathogen Interactions - genetics; Infections; Inoculation; Kinases; MAP Kinase Signaling System - genetics; Pathogens; Phenotype; Plant breeding; Plant Diseases - genetics; Plant Diseases - immunology; Plant Diseases - microbiology; Proteins; RNA-Seq; Signal transduction; Transcriptomes; transcriptomics; Verticillium; Verticillium - physiology; Verticillium dahliae (V. dahliae); Verticillium wilt; China; gene regulatory networks; RNA-seq; disease resistance; transcriptomics; cotton; verticillium wilt (VW); Verticillium dahliae (V. dahliae)
• ISSN: 2073-4409; 2073-4409
• DOI: 10.3390/cells10112961

Cotton is an important economic crop worldwide. Verticillium wilt (VW) caused by ( ) is a serious disease in cotton, resulting in massive yield losses and decline of fiber quality. Breeding resistant cotton cultivars is an efficient but elaborate method to improve the resistance of cotton against infection. However, the functional mechanism of several excellent VW resistant cotton cultivars is poorly understood at present. In our current study, we carried out RNA-seq to discover the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the roots of susceptible cotton cultivar Junmian 1 (J1) and resistant cotton cultivar Liaomian 38 (L38) upon 991 inoculation at two time points compared with the mock inoculated control plants. The potential function of DEGs uniquely expressed in J1 and L38 was also analyzed by GO enrichment and KEGG pathway associations. Most DEGs were assigned to resistance-related functions. In addition, resistance gene analogues (RGAs) were identified and analyzed for their role in the heightened resistance of the L38 cultivar against the devastating 991. In summary, we analyzed the regulatory network of genes in the resistant cotton cultivar L38 during infection, providing a novel and comprehensive insight into VW resistance in cotton.