Comparative transcriptome analysis of pollen and anther wall reveals novel insights into the regulatory mechanisms underlying anther wall development and its dehiscence in rice.

To further understand the regulatory mechanism for anther dehiscence in rice, we carried out transcriptome analysis for the following two tissues: the anther wall and pollen at the anthesis stage. With the anatomical meta-expression data, in addition to these tissues, the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two tissues were further refined to identify 1,717 pollen-preferred genes and 534 anther wall-preferred genes. A GUS transgenic line and RT-qPCR analysis for anther wall-preferred genes supported the fidelity of our gene candidates for further analysis. The refined DEGs were functionally classified through Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment and MapMan analyses. Through the analysis of cis-acting elements and alternative splicing variants, we also suggest the feature of regulatory sequences in promoter regions for anther wall-preferred expression and provide information of the unique splicing variants in anther wall. Subsequently, it was found that hormone signaling and the resulting transcriptional regulation pathways may play an important role in anther dehiscence and anther wall development. Our results could provide useful insights into future research to broaden the molecular mechanism of anther dehiscence or anther wall development in rice.