Project description:Heavy rainfall causes flooding of natural ecosystems as well as farmland, negatively affecting crop performance and yield. While the response of the wild model organism Arabidopsis thaliana to such stress conditions is well understood, we hardly know anything about the response of its relative, the important oil crop plant Brassica napus. Here, we analyzed the molecular response of leaves of rapeseed seedlings to full submergence under illumination. RNAseq experiments revealed a strong carbon starvation response under submergence, but no indication for a low-oxygen response. We used two cultivars in this study, one Asian flooding-tolerant cultivar and one European hybrid cultivar, but those genotypes did not show strong differences in their responses to submergence.
Project description:Global climate changes on one aspect of extreme temperature records would suddenly reset environmental growth conditions for field-grown crops, which severely affects agronomic and commercial traits. Taking the cold-season preferable crop rapeseed Brassica napus L. for example, low-temperature shocks change endogenous regulatory networks and cause phenotypic damages during most lifespan. Here we screened out two genetic breeding elites with different temperature-dependent germination rates, core germplasms with good germination performance and genetic loci and candidate genes potentially involved in low-temperature tolerant functions for the pre-breeding purpose of cold-tolerant germination. By using the phenotype of the germination index of 273 core germplasms under normal temperature and 10 transcriptomic datasets of cold-tolerant Jia You (JY) 1621 and cold-sensitive JY1605 elite cultivars on three timepoints during germination process, we successfully identified clustered genes of early and late temperature response germination (ETRG and LTRG) genes and several cold-tolerant (CDT) and temperature-insensitive (TPI) candidate regulators. This study performed comprehensive multi-omics research on potential cold-responsive genes for the rapeseed improvement of cold tolerance germination.
Project description:C3-C4 intermediate Moricandia suffruticosa showed tolerance to drought and heat stresses, and high photosynthetic capacity under these abiotic stresses as comparing with C3 relative crop rapeseed (Brassica napus). In our study, systematic analysis was conducted to reveal photosynthetic difference between C3-C4 Moricandia suffruticosa and its relative C3 rapeseed from the same Brassiceae tribe. It was found that Moricandia leaf photosynthesis and anatomy were significantly changed compared to rapeseed under drought and heat stress conditions. De novo transcriptome of Moricandia was assembled by next generation sequencing, and unigenes were mapped to respective rapeseed gene locus. Then comparative transcriptome analysis was conducted in leaf tissues of Moricandia and rapeseed under both drought and heat stresses. Main pathways and candidate genes were revealed from this analysis, which may be associated with the stress induced change in Moricandia.
Project description:Compared to ordinary rapeseed, high-oleic acid rapeseed has higher levels of monounsaturated fatty acids and lower levels of saturated fatty acid and polyunsaturated fatty acids, and thus is of high nutritional and health value. In addition, high-oleic acid rapeseed oil imparts cardiovascular protective effects. Based on these properties, high-oleic acid oil crops have been extensively investigated and cultivated. In this study, we employed a microarray analysis with high oleic acid line and low oleic acid line from the developing seeds (27 days after flowering) of Brassica napus.
Project description:Oil rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) is a typical winter biennial plant, with high cold tolerance during vegetative stage. In recent years, more and more early-maturing rapeseed varieties were planted across China. Unfortunately, the early-maturing rapeseed varieties with low cold tolerance have higher risk of freeze injury in cold winter and spring. Little is known about the molecular mechanisms for coping with different low-temperature stress conditions in rapeseed. In this study, we investigated 47,328 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of two early-maturing rapeseed varieties with different cold tolerance treated with cold shock at chilling (4°C) and freezing (−4°C) temperatures, as well as chilling and freezing stress following cold acclimation or control conditions. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis indicated that two conserved (the primary metabolism and plant hormone signal transduction) and two novel (plant-pathogen interaction pathway and circadian rhythms pathway) signaling pathways were significantly enriched with differentially-expressed transcripts. Our results provided a foundation for understanding the low-temperature stress response mechanisms of rapeseed. We also propose new ideas and candidate genes for genetic improvement of rapeseed tolerance to cold stresses.
Project description:Chemical hybridization agent (CHA)-induced male sterility is becoming one of the most useful tools for the crop heterosis in seed production. We had previously discovered monosulfuron ester sodium (Mes), an acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibitor of the herbicide sulfonylurea family, could induce rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) male sterility. To investigate the mechanism of Mes inducing male sterility, a cytological analysis and comparative transcriptome analysis were performed between Mes-treated plants leaves and different developmental stage anthers and those of the Mock-treated plants. Cytological analysis exhibited that Mes destroyed plastids ultrastructure and depressed the materials accumulation during anther development and maturation process. Comparative transcriptome analysis identified a total of 1501 transcripts differentially expressed in the leaves and different developmental stage anthers. Subcellular localization analysis, functional analysis and pathway analysis were carried out to obtain the clues that plastid was the seriously damaged organelle, and many genes involved in carbon and lipid metabolism and cellular transport differentially expressed. Detailed expression pattern analysis of genes related with these functions were conducted and verified by RT-PCR. In addition, several transcription factors, protein kinases and hormone related genes were identified. Carbohydrate content analysis confirmed carbon metabolism were influenced by Mes. Taken together, we proposed a putative action mode that Mes inhibited activity of acetolactate synthase, which localized in plastid in plants, and then disturbed the normal supply of carbon and lipid metabolite for anther development, finally displayed male sterility. This results have important significance for uncovering the metabolic gene regulation during anther development and may provide more potential targets for developing new male sterility inducing CHAs in rapeseed breeding. Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) plants were foliar sprayed with 0.1μg mL-1 Monosulfuron ester sodium (Mes) solution containing 50ppm DMF and 5ppm Tween 80 for about 15 ml per plant. Young leaves (C2Y1, C2Y2, C2Y3; T2Y1, T2Y2, T2Y3) of the main inflorescences and developing anthers (including small buds (C2S1, C2S2, C2S3; T2S1, T2S2, T2S3), middle anthers (C2M1, C2M2, C2M3; T2M1, T2M2, T2M3), and large anthers (C2L1, C2L2, C2L3; T2L1, T2L2, T2L3)) from Mes-treated and Mock-treated plants were collected for each experiment. Each tissue has three independent biological replicates.
Project description:Waterlogging is one major stress for crops and causes multiple problems for plants, for example low gas diffusion, reducing conditions in the soil and accumulation of toxic metabolites. Brassica napus is an important oil crop with high waterlogging sensitivity, which may cause severe yield losses. Its reactions to the stress are not fully understood. In this work the transcriptional response of rapeseed to one aspect of waterlogging, hypoxia in the root zone, was analyzed, including two rapeseed cultivars from different origin, Avatar from Europe and Zhongshuang 9 from Asia. Both cultivars showed a high number of differentially expressed genes in roots after 4 and 24 h of hypoxia. The response included many well-known hypoxia-induced genes such as genes coding for glycolytic and fermentative enzymes. Leaves hardly responded to the root stress after a 24-h-stress treatment, and photosynthesis seemed to be not affected by the stress applied to roots. There was no clear difference in either gene expression or tolerance to waterlogging between the two genotypes used in this study.
Project description:Chemical hybridization agent (CHA)-induced male sterility is becoming one of the most useful tools for the crop heterosis in seed production. We had previously discovered monosulfuron ester sodium (Mes), an acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibitor of the herbicide sulfonylurea family, could induce rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) male sterility. To investigate the mechanism of Mes inducing male sterility, a cytological analysis and comparative transcriptome analysis were performed between Mes-treated plants leaves and different developmental stage anthers and those of the Mock-treated plants. Cytological analysis exhibited that Mes destroyed plastids ultrastructure and depressed the materials accumulation during anther development and maturation process. Comparative transcriptome analysis identified a total of 1501 transcripts differentially expressed in the leaves and different developmental stage anthers. Subcellular localization analysis, functional analysis and pathway analysis were carried out to obtain the clues that plastid was the seriously damaged organelle, and many genes involved in carbon and lipid metabolism and cellular transport differentially expressed. Detailed expression pattern analysis of genes related with these functions were conducted and verified by RT-PCR. In addition, several transcription factors, protein kinases and hormone related genes were identified. Carbohydrate content analysis confirmed carbon metabolism were influenced by Mes. Taken together, we proposed a putative action mode that Mes inhibited activity of acetolactate synthase, which localized in plastid in plants, and then disturbed the normal supply of carbon and lipid metabolite for anther development, finally displayed male sterility. This results have important significance for uncovering the metabolic gene regulation during anther development and may provide more potential targets for developing new male sterility inducing CHAs in rapeseed breeding.
Project description:The fullerenes, a kind of carbon nanoparticles, have potential for enhanced stress tolerance in plants. While the positive effects of polyhydroxy fullerene—fullerol on plants in response to drought at the physiological level have been documented, the molecular mechanism in Brassica napus are not entirely understood. In this study, exogenous fullerol was applied to the leaves of B. napus seedlings given drought. The leaves of B. napus seedlings in each treatment (sufficient water condition, drought, and drought combined with fullerol) were used to conduct the molecular mechanism using transcriptomic analysis.