Mao Xiushan, Hou Nan, Liu Zhenzhong, He Jieqiang
Shandong Transport Vocational College, 7369 Bohai Road, Weifang 261206, China.
State Key Laboratory of Crop Stress Biology for Arid Areas, Yangling, Xianyang 712100, China.
Plants (Basel). 2021 Dec 30;11(1):103. doi: 10.3390/plants11010103.
Drought stress is a significant environmental factor limiting crop growth worldwide. is an important apple species endemic to China and is used for apple cultivars and rootstocks with great drought tolerance. N-methyladenosine (mA) is a common epigenetic modification on messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in eukaryotes which is critical for various biological processes. However, there are no reports on mA methylation in apple response to drought stress. Here, we assessed the mA landscape of seedlings in response to drought and analyzed the association between mA modification and transcript expression. In total, we found 19,783 and 19,609 significant mA peaks in the control and drought treatment groups, respectively, and discovered a UGUAH (H: A/U/C) motif. In , under both control and drought conditions, peaks were highly enriched in the 3' untranslated region (UTR) and coding sequence (CDS). Among 4204 significant differential mA peaks in drought-treated compared to control-treated , 4158 genes with mA modification were identified. Interestingly, a large number of hypermethylated peaks (4069) were stimulated by drought treatment compared to hypomethylation. Among the hypermethylated peak-related genes, 972 and 1238 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were up- and down-regulated in response to drought, respectively. Gene ontology (GO) analyses of differential mA-modified genes revealed that GO slims related to RNA processing, epigenetic regulation, and stress tolerance were significantly enriched. The mA modification landscape depicted in this study sheds light on the epigenetic regulation of in response to drought stress and indicates new directions for the breeding of drought-tolerant apple trees.
干旱胁迫是限制全球作物生长的一个重要环境因素。[苹果品种名称]是中国特有的重要苹果品种，用于培育具有很强耐旱性的苹果栽培品种和砧木。N-甲基腺苷（mA）是真核生物中信使核糖核酸（mRNA）上一种常见的表观遗传修饰，对各种生物学过程至关重要。然而，关于苹果对干旱胁迫响应过程中的mA甲基化尚无相关报道。在此，我们评估了[苹果品种名称]幼苗响应干旱时的mA图谱，并分析了mA修饰与转录本表达之间的关联。我们总共在对照和干旱处理组中分别发现了19,783个和19,609个显著的mA峰，并发现了一个UGUAH（H：A/U/C）基序。在[苹果品种名称]中，在对照和干旱条件下，峰在3'非翻译区（UTR）和编码序列（CDS）中高度富集。与对照处理的[苹果品种名称]相比，在干旱处理的[苹果品种名称]中有4204个显著的差异mA峰，其中鉴定出4158个具有mA修饰的基因。有趣的是，与低甲基化相比，干旱处理刺激了大量的高甲基化峰（4069个）。在与高甲基化峰相关的基因中，分别有972个和1238个差异表达基因（DEG）在响应干旱时上调和下调。对差异mA修饰基因的基因本体（GO）分析表明，与RNA加工、表观遗传调控和胁迫耐受性相关的GO精简术语显著富集。本研究中描绘的mA修饰图谱揭示了[苹果品种名称]在响应干旱胁迫时的表观遗传调控，并为耐旱苹果树的育种指明了新方向。
