The Transcriptional Landscape and Hub Genes Associated with Physiological Responses to Drought Stress in Pinus tabuliformis

• Published in: International journal of molecular sciences Vol. 22; no. 17; p. 9604
• Main Authors: Pervaiz, Tariq, Liu, Shuang-Wei, Uddin, Saleem, Amjid, Muhammad Waqas, Niu, Shi-Hui, Wu, Harry X
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 04.09.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: ABA signaling; Abiotic stress; Abscisic acid; Abscisic Acid - metabolism; Accumulation; Arabidopsis - genetics; Biosynthesis; Carbon; Carbon dioxide; Drought; drought stress; drought-recovery; Droughts; Enzymes; Forest Science; Gene expression; Gene Expression - genetics; Gene Expression Profiling - methods; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant - genetics; Gene families; Genes; Homology; Metabolism; Metabolites; Network hubs; Photosynthesis; Physiological responses; Physiology; Pine needles; Pinus - genetics; Pinus tabuliformis; Plant Leaves - metabolism; Protein kinase; PtNCED3; Rain; RNA-Seq; Sequence Analysis, RNA - methods; Signal transduction; Skogsvetenskap; Stress, Physiological - genetics; Transcription factors; Transcription Factors - metabolism; Transcriptome - genetics; Transcriptomes; China; ABA signaling; drought-recovery; Pinus tabuliformis; drought stress; PtNCED3; RNA-Seq
• ISSN: 1422-0067; 1661-6596; 1422-0067
• DOI: 10.3390/ijms22179604

Drought stress has an extensive impact on regulating various physiological, metabolic, and molecular responses. In the present study, the transcriptome was studied to evaluate the drought-responsive genes using RNA- Sequencing approache. The results depicted that photosynthetic rate and H O conductance started to decline under drought but recovered 24 h after re-watering; however, the intercellular CO concentration (Ci) increased with the onset of drought. We identified 84 drought-responsive transcription factors, 62 protein kinases, 17 transcriptional regulators, and 10 network hub genes. Additionally, we observed the expression patterns of several important gene families, including 2192 genes positively expressed in all 48 samples, and 40 genes were commonly co-expressed in all drought and recovery stages compared with the control samples. The drought-responsive transcriptome was conserved mainly between and , as 70% (6163) genes had a homologous in arabidopsis, out of which 52% homologous (3178 genes corresponding to 2086 genes in Arabidopsis) were also drought response genes in arabidopsis. The collaborative network exhibited 10 core hub genes integrating with ABA-dependent and independent pathways closely conserved with the ABA signaling pathway in the transcription factors module. from the ABA family genes had shown significantly different expression patterns under control, mild, prolonged drought, and recovery stages. We found the expression pattern was considerably increased with the prolonged drought condition. highly expressed in all drought-tested samples; more interestingly, expression pattern was higher under mild and prolonged drought. is reported as one of the important regulating enzymes in ABA synthesis. The continuous accumulation of ABA in leaves increased resistance against drought was due to accumulation of under drought stress in the pine needles.