Transcriptome Response to Drought, Rehydration and Re-Dehydration in Potato

Abstract

Potato is an important food crop and its production is susceptible to drought. Drought stress in crop growth is usually multiple- or long-term. In this study, the drought tolerant potato landrace Jancko Sisu Yari was treated with drought stress, rehydration and re-dehydration, and RNA-seq was applied to analyze the characteristics of gene regulation during these treatments. The results showed that drought-responsive genes mainly involved photosynthesis, signal transduction, lipid metabolism, sugar metabolism, wax synthesis, cell wall regulation, osmotic adjustment. Potato also can be recovered well in the re-emergence of water through gene regulation. The recovery of rehydration mainly related to patatin, lipid metabolism, sugar metabolism, flavonoids metabolism and detoxification besides the reverse expression of the most of drought-responsive genes. The previous drought stress can produce a positive responsive ability to the subsequent drought by drought hardening. Drought hardening was not only reflected in the drought-responsive genes related to the modified structure and cell components, but also in the hardening of gene expression or the “memory” of drought-responsive genes. Abundant genes involved photosynthesis, signal transduction, sugar metabolism, protease and protease inhibitors, flavonoids metabolism, transporters and transcription factors were subject to drought hardening or memorized drought in potato.

Recurrent Drought Conditions Enhance the Induction of Drought Stress Memory Genes in Glycine max L.

“…In the case of potato, drought was memorized by genes involved in photosynthesis, signal transduction, sugar metabolism, flavonoid metabolism, and the biosynthesis of protease and protease inhibitors, transporters, and transcription factors (Chen et al, 2020). The expression levels of most photosynthesis-related genes during the second drought were higher than during the first drought.…”

“…The first step toward understanding the molecular mechanism of transcriptional memory and its wide application in crop improvement is the identification of stress memory genes. Many dehydration stress memory genes have been identified in Arabidopsis (Ding et al, 2013), Zea mays (Ding et al, 2014;Virlouvet et al, 2018), rice (Li et al, 2019), and potato (Chen et al, 2020). In this study, we identified drought stress memory genes in soybean by microarray analysis using a newly designed 180K DNA chip.…”

Plant Nitric Oxide Signaling under Drought Stress

“…Most photosynthesis genes, such as Psas , Psbs , and Pets , have also been reported to be downregulated in drought-stressed plants, whereas antioxidant enzyme-related genes, including GSTs , PODs , CATs , SODs , and GPXs , as well as genes encoding the respiratory burst oxidase protein (RBOH), have been found to be upregulated [ 46 ]. Other drought-responsive genes involved in transportation ( aquaporin ( PIP ) gene), lipid and sugar metabolisms, wax synthesis, cell wall regulation, and osmotic adjustment have also been reported [ 60 ]. Besides changing the gene expression, drought stress also induces genotoxic alterations, such as DNA damage and mutational events [ 56 ].…”

Transcriptional Regulation of Protein Phosphatase 2C Genes to Modulate Abscisic Acid Signaling

“…In the memory responses, a subset of genes termed ‘memory genes’ are expressed at highly elevated or reduced levels during subsequent stress conditions. Numerous drought stress memory genes have been identified in Arabidopsis [ 140 ], maize [ 141 , 142 ], rice [ 143 ], potato [ 144 ], and soybean [ 145 ]. In Arabidopsis and soybean, drought-induced memory genes exhibiting elevated levels of transcripts include those involved in ABA-mediated tolerance responses to abiotic stresses, while the drought-repressed memory genes can be classified as light-harvesting- or photosynthesis-related genes [ 140 , 145 ].…”