Background
Alhagi sparsifolia is a typical desert phreatophyte and has evolved to withstand extreme dry, cold and hot weather. While A. sparsifolia represents an ideal model to study the molecular mechanism of plant adaption to abiotic stress, no research has been done in this aspect to date. Here we took advantage of Illumina platform to survey transcriptome in primary roots of A. sparsifolia under water stress conditions in aim to facilitate the exploration of its genetic basis for drought tolerance.Methodology and Principal FindingsWe sequenced four primary roots samples individually collected at 0, 6, 24 and 30h from the A. sparsifolia seedlings in the course of 24h of water stress following 6h of rehydration. The resulting 38,763,230, 67,511,150, 49,259,804 and 54,744,906 clean reads were pooled and assembled into 33,255 unigenes with an average length of 1,057 bp. All-unigenes were subjected to functional annotation by searching against the public databases. Based on the established transcriptome database, we further evaluated the gene expression profiles in the four different primary roots samples, and identified numbers of differently expressed genes (DEGs) reflecting the early response to water stress (6h vs. 0h), the late response to water stress (24h vs. 0h) and the response to post water stress rehydration (30h vs. 24h). Moreover, the DEGs specifically regulated at 6, 24 and 30h were captured in order to depict the dynamic changes of gene expression during water stress and subsequent rehydration. Functional categorization of the DEGs indicated the activation of oxidoreductase system, and particularly emphasized the significance of the ‘Glutathione metabolism pathway’ in response to water stress.ConclusionsThis is the first description of the genetic makeup of A. sparsifolia, thus providing a substantial contribution to the sequence resources for this species. The identified DEGs offer a deep insight into the molecular mechanism of A. sparsifolia in response to water stress, and merit further investigation.
The tobacco RBP45 is a nuclear RNA binding protein (RBP). In this study, we identified that the gene expression of NtRBP45 was significantly up‐regulated upon the
Tobacco mosaic virus
infection and the central region of the protein accounted for its nuclear localization. In particular, using a green fluorescent protein‐based transient suppression assay, we uncovered that the transiently overexpressed NtRBP45 was able to enhance local post‐transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS), facilitate siRNA accumulation, and compromise the RNA silencing suppression mediated by
Tomato aspermy virus
2b protein. Deletion mutagenesis showed that both the N‐ and C‐terminal regions of NtRBP45 were necessary for enhancing PTGS. The data overall indicated a novel RNA silencing factor that might participate in antiviral defense.
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