Transcriptome-based identification of genes related to resistance against Botrytis elliptica in Lilium regale

Abstract

A major production constraint of lilies is gray mold caused by the necrotrophic fungus Botrytis elliptica. The molecular basis of lily plant resistance to B. elliptica remains largely unexplored. To systematically dissect transcriptomic responses, we constructed four RNA-seq libraries from the leaves of Lilium regale, a promising Chinese wild Lilium species, after B. elliptica infection for 0, 4, 12, or 24 h. The sequence reads were assembled into 96 416 unigenes, of which 7697 were differentially expressed. Profiling analysis revealed changes in gene expression, including 2261 downregulated genes and 3599 upregulated genes. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis of 39 defense-related unigenes confirmed that the transcriptional changes of these genes presented in the RNA-seq data were predominately affected by B. elliptica infection. Key B. elliptica modulated genes played roles in defense responses mediated by phytohormones involved in jasmonate signaling, whereas salicylic acid and ethylene were not involved. Among transcription factors, some WRKYs, MYB, and ethylene responsive factor were clearly upregulated. Additionally, a group of genes encoding known important defense-related proteins, such as receptor-like kinases, antioxidant enzymes, polyphenol oxidase, pathogenesis-related proteins, and proteins associated with phenylpropanoid metabolism, exhibited high transcript abundances. Furthermore, the expressions of selected candidate genes were induced more rapidly and strongly in the resistant genotype than in the susceptible genotype. Taken together, the results provide a better understanding of the defense responses involved in the crosstalk between the lily and B. elliptica and a valuable set of sequence data for gray mold resistant candidate gene discovery.

Characterization of Hemerocallis citrina Transcriptome and Development of EST-SSR Markers for Evaluation of Genetic Diversity and Population Structure of Hemerocallis Collection

“…The N50 length of these unigenes was 908 bp, and the average length was 575 bp. These results were comparable to what obtained in other recent studies in species of the Liliaceae family, such as Lilium regale (N50 = 920 bp, average length = 682 bp) (Cui et al, 2018). The number of unigenes and contained SSRs obtained from the present study (92,107 unigenes with 3,430 SSRs) was also close the number identified in other three Liliaceae species (L. formolong, L. longiflorum, and L. longiflorum) (average unigenes = 72,256) (Biswas et al, 2018).…”

Metabolic and Transcriptomic Profiling of Lilium Leaves Infected With Botrytis elliptica Reveals Different Stages of Plant Defense Mechanisms

“…Taken together, our analysis indicates that SA and JA signaling pathways play pivotal roles in B. elliptica-Sorbonne" interaction. This supports the proposal that a large number of transcripts related to B. elliptica resistance in L. regale were involved in the JA and phenylpropanoid pathways (Cui et al, 2018a). Moreover, as reported in the interactions between other hosts and Botrytis spp.…”

“…To validate the RNA-seq data, the expression of 10 defenserelated DEGs, including four DEGs involved in plant-pathogen interactions (Cui et al, 2018a) and six DEGs involved in the phenylpropanoid and flavonoid biosynthesis pathways, was analyzed by qRT-PCR. The qRT-PCR was performed using the SsoFast EvaGreen Supermix (Bio-Red, USA) on the CFX96 Real-Time PCR Detection System (Bio-Rad, USA) under the following conditions: 95 • C for 30 s, followed by 39 cycles of 95 • C for 5 s and 57 • C for 5 s, melt curve 65-95 • C, increment 0.5 • C for 5s.…”

Comparative transcriptome profiling uncovers a Lilium regale NAC transcription factor, LrNAC35, contributing to defence response against cucumber mosaic virus and tobacco mosaic virus

“…In recent reports, differentially expressed transcripts in L. regale response to F. oxysporum have been identified using the SSH method (Rao et al , ). Transcriptome‐wide identification has also been performed to characterize the microRNAs (Gao et al , ) and genes (Cui et al , ) with significantly changed expression in Botrytis elliptica ‐infected L. regale , and two TFs, LrWRKY4 and LrWRKY12 , have been characterized as important regulators of resistance to B. cinerea (Cui et al , ). In this study, we employed a comparative transcriptome approach to dissect the antiviral molecular mechanism in L. regale .…”