Transcriptomic and Metabolomics Analysis of Different Endosperm Region under Nitrogen Treatments

Abstract

Storage protein distribution in wheat-grain endosperm is heterogeneous, but the underlying molecular mechanism remains unclear. Two parts of the endosperm region, the innermost endosperm (IE) region and the remaining endosperm (RE) region, grown under low nitrogen (LN) and high nitrogen (HN) treatments were used to perform metabolomic and transcriptomic analysis. We identified 533 and 503 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with at least a two-fold expression change (p < 0.05) between IE and RE, among which 81 and 78 transcripts under LN and HN, respectively, related to carbon and nitrogen metabolism, and encoded transcription factors or proteins involved in post-translational modification (PTM). The significantly differentially abundant metabolites between IE and RE were mainly amino acids, N-compounds, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids. More upregulated transcripts and metabolites were identified in RE than IE under HN conditions, indicating that HN activates metabolism in the endosperm periphery. In addition to carbon and nitrogen metabolism, transcription factors and protein PTMs, such as phosphorylation and acetylation, might determine the protein heterogeneous distribution between IE and RE and its response to nitrogen fertilizer supply.

Could Global Intensification of Nitrogen Fertilisation Increase Immunogenic Proteins and Favour the Spread of Coeliac Pathology?

“…Although the analysis has been conducted with very different genotypes of wheat growing under different soil types and climates, and therefore under very diverse conditions, the level of N fertilisation explained 30% of the change in gliadin content. These results are consistent with several studies observing a positive link of nutrient availability with the expression of gliadin genes [19,77,78,89] and all gluten proteins [17,[90][91][92]. Furthermore, the results are also consistent with common farmer knowledge on protein concentration in wheat grain being strongly affected by N availability, which leads farmers to adjust the level of nitrogen fertilisation to obtain the required protein concentration in grain for bread making [93].…”

Mining of candidate genes involved in the biosynthesis of dextrorotatory borneol in Cinnamomum burmannii by transcriptomic analysis on three chemotypes

“…Transcriptome analysis is currently the most widely used and cost effective way to screen target gene(s) rapidly in functional genomic studies (Ali et al, 2018;Ma et al, 2019;Zhou et al, 2019). In this study, a total of 100,218 unigenes were generated by transtomic sequencing of three chemotypes of C. burmannii.…”

Insights into nitrogen metabolism in the wild and cultivated lettuce as revealed by transcriptome and weighted gene co-expression network analysis

“…The second strategy to improve NUE involves a targeted approach of identifying specific genes associated with N metabolism pathways and developing engineered plants with modified gene expression. Several genome-wide transcriptomics have been conducted to identify N metabolism genes and investigate responses to N stress in various plants such as Arabidopsis 27 – 29 , rice 30 – 33 , maize 34 – 36 , wheat 37 , 38 , brassica 10 , 39 , spinach 40 , potato 41 . However, the efforts to identify candidate genes associated with N metabolism and transcriptomic response of different lettuce species to N stress is lacking, though QTLs related to NUE has been recently mapped 42 .…”