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A comprehensive assessment of the transcriptome of cork oak (Quercus suber) through EST sequencing.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Cork oak (Quercus suber) is one of the rare trees with the ability to produce cork, a material widely used to make wine bottle stoppers, flooring and insulation materials, among many other uses. The molecular mechanisms of cork formation are still poorly understood, in great part due to the difficulty in studying a species with a long life-cycle and for which there is scarce molecular/genomic information. Cork oak forests are of great ecological importance and represent a major economic and social resource in Southern Europe and Northern Africa. However, global warming is threatening the cork oak forests by imposing thermal, hydric and many types of novel biotic stresses. Despite the economic and social value of the Q. suber species, few genomic resources have been developed, useful for biotechnological applications and improved forest management. RESULTS: We generated in excess of 7 million sequence reads, by pyrosequencing 21 normalized cDNA libraries derived from multiple Q. suber tissues and organs, developmental stages and physiological conditions. We deployed a stringent sequence processing and assembly pipeline that resulted in the identification of ~159,000 unigenes. These were annotated according to their similarity to known plant genes, to known Interpro domains, GO classes and E.C. numbers. The phylogenetic extent of this ESTs set was investigated, and we found that cork oak revealed a significant new gene space that is not covered by other model species or EST sequencing projects. The raw data, as well as the full annotated assembly, are now available to the community in a dedicated web portal at http://www.corkoakdb.org. CONCLUSIONS: This genomic resource represents the first trancriptome study in a cork producing species. It can be explored to develop new tools and approaches to understand stress responses and developmental processes in forest trees, as well as the molecular cascades underlying cork differentiation and disease response.

SUBMITTER: Pereira-Leal JB

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4070548 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A comprehensive assessment of the transcriptome of cork oak (Quercus suber) through EST sequencing.

Pereira-Leal José B JB Abreu Isabel A IA Alabaça Cláudia S CS Almeida Maria Helena MH Almeida Paulo P Almeida Tânia T Amorim Maria Isabel MI Araújo Susana S Azevedo Herlânder H Badia Aleix A Batista Dora D Bohn Andreas A Capote Tiago T Carrasquinho Isabel I Chaves Inês I Coelho Ana Cristina AC Costa Maria Manuela Ribeiro MM Costa Rita R Cravador Alfredo A Egas Conceição C Faro Carlos C Fortes Ana M AM Fortes Ana M AM Fortunato Ana S AS Gaspar Maria João MJ Gonçalves Sónia S Graça José J Horta Marília M Inácio Vera V Leitão José M JM Lino-Neto Teresa T Marum Liliana L Matos José J Mendonça Diogo D Miguel Andreia A Miguel Célia M CM Morais-Cecílio Leonor L Neves Isabel I Nóbrega Filomena F Oliveira Maria Margarida MM Oliveira Rute R Pais Maria Salomé MS Paiva Jorge A JA Paulo Octávio S OS Pinheiro Miguel M Raimundo João A P JA Ramalho José C JC Ribeiro Ana I AI Ribeiro Teresa T Rocheta Margarida M Rodrigues Ana Isabel AI Rodrigues José C JC Saibo Nelson J M NJ Santo Tatiana E TE Santos Ana Margarida AM Sá-Pereira Paula P Sebastiana Mónica M Simões Fernanda F Sobral Rómulo S RS Tavares Rui R Teixeira Rita R Varela Carolina C Veloso Maria Manuela MM Ricardo Cândido P P CP

BMC genomics 20140515

<h4>Background</h4>Cork oak (Quercus suber) is one of the rare trees with the ability to produce cork, a material widely used to make wine bottle stoppers, flooring and insulation materials, among many other uses. The molecular mechanisms of cork formation are still poorly understood, in great part due to the difficulty in studying a species with a long life-cycle and for which there is scarce molecular/genomic information. Cork oak forests are of great ecological importance and represent a majo ...[more]

PMID: 24885229

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Project description:Purpose:Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitors are used to treat Alzheimer's patients because they enhance cholinergic neurotransmission. It is urgent to find new and efficient inhibitors from natural sources, highly bioavailable with low or no toxicity. The plant kingdom is extremely rich in a variety of compounds that are potent AChE inhibitors: flavonoids and other phenolic compounds have been recognized as promising Alzheimer's treatment agents. In this study, in vitro acetylcholinesterase inhibition, antioxidant activities, and total flavonoid and phenolic contents of ethanol-water extracts from Quercus suber cork and corkback were evaluated. Methods:The acetylcholinesterase activity was determined by a colorimetric assay based on Ellman's methodology. The Folin-Ciocalteu colorimetric method was used for total phenolic content determination and the aluminium chloride method for the determination of total flavonoid content. Antioxidant activity assays were performed using the DPPH and FRAP assays. Results:The acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity from Q. suber cork and corkback ethanol-water extracts was as follows: 62% inhibition with corkback extracts over 0.5?mg/mL and around 49% inhibition in cork extracts over 1.0?mg/mL extracts' concentration. Regarding the DPPH radical scavenging activity, the concentrations of cork and corkback ethanol-water extracts required for 50% DPPH inhibition (IC50) were 3.2??g/mL and 4.0-5.2??g/mL. Corkback extracts are less effective than Trolox standard (3.2??g/mL) but cork extracts showed the same free radical scavenging activity compared to Trolox. Cork and corkback extracts have antioxidant power of 750.9-775.4?mg TEAC/g extract and 1051.2-2052.4?mg TEAC/g extract, respectively, which are significantly higher than the ones obtained with Trolox: 19.6-21.0?mg TEAC/g extract (cork assays) and 57.4-66.3?mg TEAC/g extract (corkback assays). The amounts of total phenolic (TPC) and flavonoid (TFC) compounds were 8.7-32.3?mg GAE/g and 4.8-10.7?mg CE/g dry mass for cork and 5.4-5.7?mg GAE/g and 42.5?mg CE/g dry mass for corkback extracts, respectively, using catechin (CE) and GAE (gallic acid) as standards. Conclusion:These findings demonstrate the remarkable potential of these extracts as valuable source of antioxidants with interesting acetylcholinesterase inhibitory activity.

Project description:BackgroundCork oak (Quercus suber L.) has a natural distribution across western Mediterranean regions and is a keystone forest tree species in these ecosystems. The fruiting phase is especially critical for its regeneration but the molecular mechanisms underlying the biochemical and physiological changes during cork oak acorn development are poorly understood. In this study, the transcriptome of the cork oak acorn, including the seed, was characterized in five stages of development, from early development to acorn maturation, to identify the dominant processes in each stage and reveal transcripts with important functions in gene expression regulation and response to water.ResultsA total of 80,357 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were de novo assembled from RNA-Seq libraries representative of the several acorn developmental stages. Approximately 7.6 % of the total number of transcripts present in Q. suber transcriptome was identified as acorn specific. The analysis of expression profiles during development returned 2,285 differentially expressed (DE) transcripts, which were clustered into six groups. The stage of development corresponding to the mature acorn exhibited an expression profile markedly different from other stages. Approximately 22 % of the DE transcripts putatively code for transcription factors (TF) or transcriptional regulators, and were found almost equally distributed among the several expression profile clusters, highlighting their major roles in controlling the whole developmental process. On the other hand, carbohydrate metabolism, the biological pathway most represented during acorn development, was especially prevalent in mid to late stages as evidenced by enrichment analysis. We further show that genes related to response to water, water deprivation and transport were mostly represented during the early (S2) and the last stage (S8) of acorn development, when tolerance to water desiccation is possibly critical for acorn viability.ConclusionsTo our knowledge this work represents the first report of acorn development transcriptomics in oaks. The obtained results provide novel insights into the developmental biology of cork oak acorns, highlighting transcripts putatively involved in the regulation of the gene expression program and in specific processes likely essential for adaptation. It is expected that this knowledge can be transferred to other oak species of great ecological value.

Dataset Information

A comprehensive assessment of the transcriptome of cork oak (Quercus suber) through EST sequencing.

Publications

A comprehensive assessment of the transcriptome of cork oak (Quercus suber) through EST sequencing.

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