Comprehensive Analyses of Nitric Oxide-Induced Plant Stem Cell-Related Genes in .

Plant stem cells are pluripotent cells that have diverse applications in regenerative biology and medicine. However, their roles in plant growth and disease resistance are often overlooked. Using high-throughput RNA-seq data, we identified approximately 20 stem cell-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that were responsive to the nitric oxide (NO) donor S-nitrosocysteine (CySNO) after six hours of infiltration. Among these DEGs, the highest number of positive correlations ( ≥ 0.8) was observed for / () 12. Gene ontology (GO) terms for molecular function showed DEGs associated with signal transduction and receptor activity. A promoter study of these DEGs showed the presence of -acting elements that are involved in growth as well as the regulation of abiotic and biotic stress. Phylogenetic analysis of the stem cell-related genes and their common orthologs in rice, soybean, poplar, and tomato suggested that most soybean stem cell-related genes were grouped with the CLE type of stem cell genes, while the rice stem cell-related genes were grouped with the receptor-like proteins. The functional genomic-based characterization of the role of stem cell DEGs showed that under control conditions, the mutant showed a similar phenotype to that of the wild-type (WT) plants; however, under CySNO-mediated nitrosative stress, showed increased shoot and root length compared to WT. Furthermore, the inoculation of with virulent DC3000 showed a resistant phenotype with fewer pathogens growing at early time points. The qRT-PCR validation and correlation with the RNA-seq data showed a Pearson correlation coefficient of >0.8, indicating the significantly high reliability of the RNA-seq analysis.