Project description:Transcriptomes analysis of the petals from a red-flowered white clover mutant (red flowers) and its shade-treated counterpart (white flowers) grown under shaded conditions was performed using high-throughput sequencing. We obtained 121,626,564 and 130,577,944 clean reads in red-flowered mutant and treated counterpart, respectively. Of these clean reads, we respectively gained 125,350 and 99,638 unigene sequencces in two groups. As a result, a total of 157,964 unigenes were obtained with an average length of 728 bp and a median length of 1346 bp. These findings provideed insights into the expression profiles in red-flowered white clover mutant, and deepened our understanding of flower pigmentation in white clower.
Project description:Red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) is one of the most important legume forage species in temperate livestock agriculture. Tetraploid red clover cultivars are generally producing less seed than diploid cultivars. Improving the seed setting potential of tetraploid cultivars is necessary in order to utilize the high forage quality and environmentally sustainable nitrogen fixation of red clover. Two genotypes, one from cv.Tripo with weak seed setting and one from cv.Lasang with strong seed setting, were selected based on data from field experiments for transcriptome analysis of developing flower buds. De novo and reference based analyses of transcriptome assemblies were conducted to study the global transcriptome changes from early to late developmental stages of flower development of the two contrasting red clover genotypes. Transcript profiles, gene ontology enrichment and KEGG pathway analysis indicate that genes related to flower development, pollen pistil interactions, photosynthesis and embryo development are differentially expressed between the Tripo and Lasang genotypes. A significant number of genes related to pollination was overrepresented in Lasang, which might be a reason for its good seed setting ability. The candidate genes detected in this study might be used to develop molecular tools for breeding tetraploid red clover varieties with improved seed yield potentials.