Biotechnology Department, CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR-IHBT), Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, 176061, India.
Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), CSIR-IHBT, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh, 176061, India.
Sci Rep. 2019 May 16;9(1):7487. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-43925-w.
Tea is popular health beverage consumed by millions of people worldwide. Drought is among the acute abiotic stress severely affecting tea cultivation, globally. In current study, transcriptome sequencing of four diverse tea genotypes with inherent contrasting genetic response to drought (tolerant & sensitive) generated more than 140 million reads. De novo and reference-based assembly and functional annotation of 67,093 transcripts with multifarious public protein databases yielded 54,484 (78.2%) transcripts with significant enrichment of GO and KEGG drought responsive pathways in tolerant genotypes. Comparative DGE and qRT analysis revealed key role of ABA dependent & independent pathways, potassium & ABC membrane transporters (AtABCG22, AtABCG11, AtABCC5 & AtABCC4) and antioxidant defence system against oxidative stress in tolerant genotypes, while seems to be failed in sensitive genotypes. Additionally, highly expressed UPL3HECT E3 ligases and RING E3 ligases possibly enhance drought tolerance by actively regulating functional modification of stress related genes. Further, ascertainment of, 80803 high quality putative SNPs with functional validation of key non-synonymous SNPs suggested their implications for developing high-throughput genotyping platform in tea. Futuristically, functionally relevant genomic resources can be potentially utilized for gene discovery, genetic engineering and marker-assisted genetic improvement for better yield and quality in tea under drought conditions.
茶是一种深受全球数百万人喜爱的健康饮品。干旱是一种严重影响茶叶种植的急性非生物胁迫，在当前的研究中，对具有内在遗传抗旱反应（耐受和敏感）的四种不同茶树基因型进行了转录组测序，产生了超过 1.4 亿个reads。基于de novo 和参考的组装以及与多种公共蛋白质数据库的功能注释，产生了 67093 个转录本，其中 54484 个（78.2%）转录本在耐受基因型中对干旱响应途径具有显著的GO 和 KEGG 富集。比较 DGE 和 qRT 分析表明，ABA 依赖和独立途径、钾和 ABC 膜转运蛋白（AtABCG22、AtABCG11、AtABCC5 和 AtABCC4）和抗氧化防御系统在耐受基因型中对氧化应激具有关键作用，而在敏感基因型中似乎不起作用。此外，高表达的 UPL3HECT E3 连接酶和 RING E3 连接酶可能通过主动调节与应激相关基因的功能修饰来增强耐旱性。此外，确定了 80803 个高质量的可能 SNP，并对关键非同义 SNP 进行了功能验证，这表明它们可能用于开发茶叶高通量基因分型平台。从未来发展来看，功能相关的基因组资源可用于基因发现、遗传工程和标记辅助遗传改良，以在干旱条件下提高茶叶的产量和质量。
