Transcriptome analysis of reveals freezing-tolerance related genes induced by root endophytic fungus .

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Freezing stress is a serious environmental factor that obstructs plant development. The root endophytic fungus has proved to be effective to confer abiotic stress tolerance to host plants. To investigate how improves freezing tolerance, we compared the expression profiles of -colonized and uncolonized seedlings either exposed to freezing stress or not. Nearly 24 million (93.5%) reads were aligned on the genome. 634 genes were differentially expressed between colonized and uncolonized exposed to freezing stress. Interestingly, 193 genes did not respond to freezing stress but were up-regulated by under freezing stress. Freezing stress-responsive genes encoded various members of the WRKY, ERF, bHLH, HSF, MYB and NAC transcription factor families. The qRT-PCR analyses confirmed the high-throughput sequencing results for 28 genes. Functional enrichment analysis indicated that the fungus mainly controls genes for freezing-stress related proteins involved in lipid and ion transport, metabolism pathways and phytohormone signaling. Our findings identified novel target genes of in freezing-stress exposed plants and highlight the benefits of the endophyte for plants exposed to a less investigated environmental threat.

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The online version of this article (10.1007/s12298-020-00922-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.