Response mechanism of carbon metabolism of Pinus massoniana to gradient high temperature and drought stress

Abstract

Background The carbon metabolism pathway is of paramount importance for the growth and development of plants, exerting a pivotal regulatory role in stress responses. The exacerbation of drought impacts on the plant carbon cycle due to global warming necessitates comprehensive investigation into the response mechanisms of Masson Pine (Pinus massoniana Lamb.), an exemplary pioneer drought-tolerant tree, thereby establishing a foundation for predicting future forest ecosystem responses to climate change. Results The seedlings of Masson Pine were utilized as experimental materials in this study, and the transcriptome, metabolome, and photosynthesis were assessed under varying temperatures and drought intensities. The findings demonstrated that the impact of high temperature and drought on the photosynthetic rate and transpiration rate of Masson Pine seedlings was more pronounced compared to individual stressors. The analysis of transcriptome data revealed that the carbon metabolic pathways of Masson Pine seedlings were significantly influenced by high temperature and drought co-stress, with a particular impact on genes involved in starch and sucrose metabolism. The metabolome analysis revealed that only trehalose and Galactose 1-phosphate were specifically associated with the starch and sucrose metabolic pathways. Furthermore, the trehalose metabolic heat map was constructed by integrating metabolome and transcriptome data, revealing a significant increase in trehalose levels across all three comparison groups. Additionally, the PmTPS1, PmTPS5, and PmTPPD genes were identified as key regulatory genes governing trehalose accumulation. Conclusions The combined effects of high temperature and drought on photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, transcriptome, and metabolome were more pronounced than those induced by either high temperature or drought alone. Starch and sucrose metabolism emerged as the pivotal carbon metabolic pathways in response to high temperature and drought stress in Masson pine. Trehalose along with PmTPS1, PmTPS5, and PmTPPD genes played crucial roles as metabolites and key regulators within the starch and sucrose metabolism.

Mining differential gene expression in Fagus crenata seedlings in response to short-term soil drought stress

“…These changes in phenotypic traits over short timescales are driven by differential gene expression, which can be measured by assessing the expression levels of mRNA found in plant tissues (Shanker et al 2014). Differential expression analyses comparing water-stressed plants with controls have identi ed candidate genes relating to acclimation under short-term drought stress in a wide range of species, including oak (Gugger et al 2017), poplar (Yang et al 2023) and pine (Li et al 2024), as well as annual plants such as maize (Le et al 2012) and tomato (Liu et al 2023). Recent advances in nextgeneration sequencing technology can yield large quantities of mRNA sequence data in a short time period (RNA-seq), and thus provide a cost-e cient and powerful tool for differential expression analyses (Deshpande et al 2023).…”