Project description:The tung (Vernicia fordii) oil is a valuable industrial oil and has been considered to the production of biodiesel. Because of the poor agronomic traits of this crop, efforts have been made to transfer genes related to the production of its oil to higher yielding plants. However, the mechanisms highlighting gene expression in this plant is poorly understood. MicroRNAs are endogenously encoded small RNAs that play a key role in diverse plant biological processes. In order to identify and characterize miRNAs and their targets in V. fordii we generated by deep sequencing a sRNA and a mRNA library from mature seeds. Using sequence homology we identified 138 conserved plant miRNAs, which were distributed in 34 conserved miRNAs families. Further computation analysis allowed the prediction of secondary structures for 18 conserved and 14 novel miRNAs, as well as several miRNA variants (isomiRNAs). The predicted miRNA target genes are involved in a broad range of physiological functions, including growth and development, stress resistance and also lipid metabolism. This study presents the first identification of V. fordii miRNAs and contributes to understand the function of these miRNAs.
Project description:Tung oil, the major product of tung tree (Vernicia fordii) seeds, is one of the highest quality oils for industrial applications and has been considered to the production of biodiesel. Because of the poor agronomical traits of this crop, efforts have been made to breed tung tree for higher fruit yield and for modification of oil properties to be used as biodiesel, or to engineer higher yielding plants to produce tung oil. However, these efforts have been hampered by the lack of molecular information since there is no available genome and the identified and characterized transcripts of tung are scarce. Furthermore, there are still many knowledge gaps regarding tung oil biosynthesis. To provide a comprehensive and accurate foundation for molecular studies of tung tree, herein we present the reference transcriptome dataset of tung mature seeds. A set of 43,081,927 ESTs were assembled into 47,585 unigenes. The homology search using blastx against the GenBank non-redundant protein database and the Swiss-Prot database resulted in the annotation of 96 % and 81% of the unigenes, respectively. We also systematically arranged the series of transcripts potentially associated with oil biosynthesis and breakdown and examined the expression profile of a subset of those genes in samples from different stages of seed development, providing a valuable source of genes and transcriptional information related to these pathways. This study represents the first large-scale transcriptome annotation of tung tree seeds and will be useful to breed tung for oil properties and other agronomical traits.
Project description:To further elucidate the molecular mechanism underling sex determination at the divergence stage of male and female flowers, the comparative transcriptome analysis was performed. In total, 56,065 unigenes were generated 24,567 transcripts were identified. Among 608 differential expression genes (DEGs), 310 DEGs showed significant expression in males and 298 DEGs in females. The data showed that the sexual dimorphism of female flowers was affected by jasmonic acid, transcription factors and some genes related with activity of floral meristem, which were considered as the candidate sex determination genes. In this study, interesting information will be provided in understanding the development of unisexual flower and the regulatory networks hidden the sex determination in V. fordii, which is useful for the practice of improving its yield.
Project description:Background: Vernicia fordii (Tung oil tree) is a popular tree for biodiesel production in China. Unfortunately, the devastating Fusarium wilt disease caused great losses in production. Its sister species (Vernicia montana) was shown resistant to this pathogen. Vernicia fordii and Vernicia montana are main Vernicia species. V. fordii owns superior oil and agronomic traits, but susceptible to tung wilt disease, while V. nontana is resistant the wilt. However, the plants response mechanism remains largely unknown. Method: To define the divergence of gene expression modules between the resistant and susceptible Vernicia species responding to tung wilt pathogen, we generated comparative transcriptome atlases of two species during the process of infection with the pathogen F. oxysporum by RNA Sequencing in three biological replicates. Results: We describe the de novo assembly of the transcriptome of V. fordii and V. montana, comprising 258,430 and 245,240 non-redundant transcripts with N50 of 1,776 and 2,452 respectively. About 44,310 pair of putatively one-to-one orthologous genes between V. fordii and V. montana transcriptoms were identified. Overall, a high proportion of orthologous genes shared remarkably similar expression mode between Vernicia species. K means clustering indicated 2 cluster appear opposite expression mode. The highly connected gene expression analysis were conducted among genes with significantly differential expression mode, and the result indicated D6PK and LRR-RLK CLAVATA2 were top hub genes and hub genes glycosyltransferase (Gts), GLABRA2, PERK15 and EREBP-like factor were significantly associated with pathologic grades in resistant V. montana. Moreover, the result showed the resistant is a crucial signaling network, where MAPK signaling pathway, Plant-pathogen interaction, Circadian rhythm, Calcium signaling pathway and apoptosis fulfill distinct function. Additionally, dozens of unigenes were validated by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). The study provided insight into the resistance gene expression modules. Conclusion: We first conducted a system analyses of the dynamics of gene expression both in susceptible and resistant Vernicia species with pathogen F. oxysporum infection. The results will serve as the important foundation to further deeply validation the resistance mechanism and breeding of the woody biodiesel plants V. fordii and V. montana.
2017-02-08 | GSE80228 | GEO
Project description:Tung tree transcriptome Different tissues transcriptome of tung tree