Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Ave., Cambridge, MA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2020 Nov 12;10(1):19637. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-76750-7.
The earliest phases of floral development include a number of crucial processes that lay the foundation for the subsequent morphogenesis of floral organs and success in reproduction. Currently, key transcriptional changes during this developmental window have been characterized in the model species Arabidopsis thaliana, but little is known about how transcriptional dynamics change over the course of these developmental processes in other plant systems. Here, we have conducted the first in-depth transcriptome profiling of early floral development in Aquilegia at four finely dissected developmental stages, with eight biological replicates per stage. Using differential gene expression analysis and weighted gene co-expression network analysis, we identified both crucial genes whose expression changes mark the transitions between developmental stages and hub genes in co-expression modules. Our results support the potential functional conservation of key genes in early floral development that have been identified in other systems, but also reveal a number of previously unknown or overlooked loci that are worthy of further investigation. In addition, our results highlight not only the dynamics of transcriptional regulation during early floral development, but also the potential involvement of the complex, essential networks of small RNA and post-translational regulation to these developmental stages.
花发育的早期阶段包括许多关键过程，为随后花器官的形态发生和生殖成功奠定了基础。目前，在模式物种拟南芥中已经描述了这一发育窗口期间的关键转录变化，但对于其他植物系统中这些发育过程中转录动态如何变化知之甚少。在这里，我们在四个精细解剖的发育阶段对金鱼草的早期花发育进行了首次深入的转录组分析，每个阶段有 8 个生物学重复。使用差异基因表达分析和加权基因共表达网络分析，我们鉴定了标记发育阶段之间转变的关键基因和共表达模块中的枢纽基因。我们的结果支持在其他系统中已经鉴定的早期花发育中关键基因的潜在功能保守性，但也揭示了一些以前未知或被忽视的值得进一步研究的基因座。此外，我们的结果不仅突出了早期花发育过程中转录调控的动态，还突出了小 RNA 和翻译后调控等复杂、必要的网络在这些发育阶段的潜在参与。
