College of Pharmacy, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China; Collaborative Innovation Center of Chinese Medicinal Resources Industrialization, Nanjing, China; National and Local Collaborative Engineering Center of Chinese Medicinal Resources Industrialization and Formulae Innovative Medicine, Nanjing, China; Department of Pharmacy, Air Force Hospital of Eastern Theater Command, Nanjing, China.
College of Pharmacy, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China; Collaborative Innovation Center of Chinese Medicinal Resources Industrialization, Nanjing, China; National and Local Collaborative Engineering Center of Chinese Medicinal Resources Industrialization and Formulae Innovative Medicine, Nanjing, China.
Plant Physiol Biochem. 2020 Nov;156:314-322. doi: 10.1016/j.plaphy.2020.09.023. Epub 2020 Sep 29.
Prunella vulgaris L. is a moderately salt tolerant plant commonly found in China and Europe, whose spica (Prunellae Spica) has been used as a traditional medicine. The scant transcriptomic and genomic resources of Prunellae Spica have greatly hindered further exploration of the underlying salt tolerance mechanism of this species. To clarify the genetic basis of its salt tolerance, high-throughput sequencing of mRNAs was employed for de novo transcriptome assembly differential expression analysis of Prunellae Spica under salt stress. 118,664 unigenes were obtained by assembling pooled reads from all libraries with 68,119 sequences annotated. A total of 3857 unigenes were differentially expressed under low, medium and high salt stress, including 2456 up-regulated and 1401 down-regulated DEGs, respectively. Gene ontology analysis revealed that salt stress-related categories involving 'catalytic activity', 'binding', 'metabolic process' and 'cellular process' were highly enriched. KEGG pathway annotation showed that the DEGs from different salt stress treatment groups were mainly enriched in the pathways of translation, signal transduction, carbohydrate metabolism, energy metabolism, lipid metabolism and amino acid metabolism, accounting for over 60% of all DEGs. Finally, it showed that the results of quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis for 10 unigenes that randomly selected were significantly consistent with RNA-seq data, which further assisted in the selection of salt stress-responsive candidate genes in Prunellae Spica. This study represents a significant step forward in understanding the salt tolerance mechanism of Prunellae Spica, and also provides a significant transcriptomic resource for future work.
夏枯草 L. 是一种中度耐盐植物，在中国和欧洲都很常见，其穗（夏枯草）已被用作传统药物。夏枯草的转录组和基因组资源稀缺，极大地阻碍了对该物种耐盐机制的进一步探索。为了阐明其耐盐的遗传基础，对夏枯草在盐胁迫下的 mRNA 进行了高通量测序，进行了从头转录组组装和差异表达分析。通过对所有文库的合并读数进行组装，获得了 118664 个 unigenes，其中 68119 个序列被注释。共鉴定到 3857 个差异表达基因，在低盐、中盐和高盐胁迫下分别有 2456 个上调和 1401 个下调的 DEGs。GO 分析表明，与盐胁迫相关的类别包括“催化活性”、“结合”、“代谢过程”和“细胞过程”等，这些类别高度富集。KEGG 通路注释显示，不同盐胁迫处理组的 DEGs 主要富集在翻译、信号转导、碳水化合物代谢、能量代谢、脂质代谢和氨基酸代谢途径中，占所有 DEGs 的 60%以上。最后，结果表明随机选择的 10 个 unigenes 的定量实时聚合酶链反应（qRT-PCR）分析与 RNA-seq 数据显著一致，这进一步有助于在夏枯草中选择盐胁迫响应候选基因。本研究代表了对夏枯草耐盐机制理解的重要进展，也为未来的工作提供了重要的转录组资源。
