Project description:Flooding stress is a major environmental threat for many terrestrial plants. The detrimental effects of flooding stress, however, vary between different plant species. Whereas many crops are rather sensitive to flooding, some wild species from flood-prone areas are well adapted to excess water conditions. Morphological adaptations like adventitious roots and aerenchyma formation, or the ability to elongate rapidly the above-ground organs, allow these plants to thrive in water. The focus of this research is Nasturtium officinale, also known as watercress, which is an auto-tetraploid, dicotyledonous and stem-growing Brassicaceae species. Its natural habitat is near rivers and streams, but absent from stagnant water. Submergence induces underwater elongation of stems and growth suppression of petioles in Nasturtium officinale. By using the RNA sequencing technique, we aimed to uncover the underlying mechanisms for these contrasting responses. Combining submergence experiments with hormone manipulations revealed that ABA degradation is required for stem elongation.
Project description:Dendrobium officinale is a common and expensive traditional Chinese medicine used as a medicinal agent and food that has immunoregulatory and anti-inflammatory effects. Methods to authenticate D. officinale are lacking. Although chemical profiles of D. officinale were published, transcriptomic profiling is lacking. Here, we collected D. officinale from two regions (Yunnan and Miandian) and the analogue D. compactum. The Yunnan samples had three different quality levels. All samples were subjected to genome-wide biological response fingerprinting (BioReF) in RAW264.7 cells using RNA sequencing.