Project description:Trichomes are the hair-like structures that are widely present on the surface of aerial organs and function in plant defense against biotic and abiotic stresses. Previous studies focus on the single cell trichomes in Arabidopsis and cotton, or multicellular glandular trichomes in tomato, but the developmental process and molecular mechanisms controlling multicellular non-glandular trichome development are largely neglected. Here, we extensively characterized the fruit trichome (spine) development in wild type cucumber and in a tiny branched hair (tbh) mutant that contains a spontaneous mutation and has hairless foliage and smooth fruit surface. Our data indicated that cucumber trichome was multicellular and non-glandular, with no branches or endoreduplication. Further, the major feature of cucumber trichome development was spine base expansion. Transcriptome profiling through Digital Gene Expression indicated that meristem-related genes and transcription factors were implicated in the fruit spine development, and polarity regulators were upregulated during spine base expansion. qRT-PCR verified the reliability of our RNA-SEQ data, and in situ hybridization confirmed the enriched expression of meristem regulators CUP-SHAPED COTYLEDON3 (CUC3) and STM (SHOOT MERISTEMLESS) , as well as the abaxial identity gene KANADI (KAN) in cucumber fruit spine. Together, our results suggest a distinct regulatory pathway involving meristem genes and polarity regulators in multicellular trichome development in cucumber. Using Digital Gene Expression technology to compare the genome-wide gene expression profiles in the fruit spines of wild type cucumber and the tbh mutant, as well as the fruit spines on fruits of 0.5cm and 1.6cm long, repectively. Two biological repelicates were generated for each tissue.
Project description:Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) fruit is a type of fleshy fruit that is harvested immaturely. Early fruit development directly determines the final fruit length and diameter, and consequently the fruit yield and quality. Different cucumber varieties display huge variations of fruit length, but how fruit length is determined at the molecular level remains poorly understood. To understand the genes and gene networks that regulate fruit length in cucumber, high throughout RNA-seq data were used to compare the transcriptomes of early fruit from two near isogenic lines with different fruit lengths. 3955 genes were found to be differentially expressed, among which 2368 genes were significantly up-regulated and 1587 down-regulated in the line with long fruit. Microtubule and cell cycle related genes were dramatically activated in the long fruit, and transcription factors were implicated in the fruit length regulation in cucumber. Thus, our results built a foundation to dissect the molecular mechanism of fruit length control in cucumber, a key agricultural trait of significant economic importance. Comparative analysis of fruit from two near-isogenic lines, 408 (long fruit) and 409 (short fruit), was employed to discover genes and networks that regulate the fruit length. Two biological replicates were used from each line.
Project description:Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) fruit is a type of fleshy fruit that is harvested immaturely. Early fruit development directly determines the final fruit length and diameter, and consequently the fruit yield and quality. Different cucumber varieties display huge variations of fruit length, but how fruit length is determined at the molecular level remains poorly understood. To understand the genes and gene networks that regulate fruit length in cucumber, high throughout RNA-seq data were used to compare the transcriptomes of early fruit from two near isogenic lines with different fruit lengths. 3955 genes were found to be differentially expressed, among which 2368 genes were significantly up-regulated and 1587 down-regulated in the line with long fruit. Microtubule and cell cycle related genes were dramatically activated in the long fruit, and transcription factors were implicated in the fruit length regulation in cucumber. Thus, our results built a foundation to dissect the molecular mechanism of fruit length control in cucumber, a key agricultural trait of significant economic importance.
Project description:Trichomes are the hair-like structures that are widely present on the surface of aerial organs and function in plant defense against biotic and abiotic stresses. Previous studies focus on the single cell trichomes in Arabidopsis and cotton, or multicellular glandular trichomes in tomato, but the developmental process and molecular mechanisms controlling multicellular non-glandular trichome development are largely neglected. Here, we extensively characterized the fruit trichome (spine) development in wild type cucumber and in a tiny branched hair (tbh) mutant that contains a spontaneous mutation and has hairless foliage and smooth fruit surface. Our data indicated that cucumber trichome was multicellular and non-glandular, with no branches or endoreduplication. Further, the major feature of cucumber trichome development was spine base expansion. Transcriptome profiling through Digital Gene Expression indicated that meristem-related genes and transcription factors were implicated in the fruit spine development, and polarity regulators were upregulated during spine base expansion. qRT-PCR verified the reliability of our RNA-SEQ data, and in situ hybridization confirmed the enriched expression of meristem regulators CUP-SHAPED COTYLEDON3 (CUC3) and STM (SHOOT MERISTEMLESS) , as well as the abaxial identity gene KANADI (KAN) in cucumber fruit spine. Together, our results suggest a distinct regulatory pathway involving meristem genes and polarity regulators in multicellular trichome development in cucumber.
Project description:To identify the differentially expressed genes(DEGs) in the ventral and dorsal of cucumber bending fruits,cucumber bending fruit mRNA profiles of 2-day-old ventral and dorsal were generated by deep sequencing. After removing the low quality reads, the total number of clean reads in two library were 27.07 million and16.52 million, accounted for 85.21% and 80.71% of total reads .We identified a total of 4313 sequences differentially expressed in ventral and dorsal of bending fruit with a 2-fold or greater change and P < 0.01 , the Dorsal (D2) served as a control, in which 2351 up-regulated genes and 1962 down-regulated genes.For up-regulated genes, protein kinase activity, ethylene mediated signaling pathway, regulation of cell shape, auxin polar transport were significantly enriched, whereas down-regulated genes, the functional classes photosynthesis, oxidation reduction, response to auxin stimulus were significantly enriched. Moreover, among DEGs related to ethylene, we identified an ERF/AP2 gene CsERF025 that was significant difference in the dorsal and ventral of cucumber. up-regulation of CsERF025 in cucumber promoted fruit bendng and Increased the fruit bending angle, suggesting that CsERF025 plays an important role in cucumber bending fruit.
Project description:Purpose: Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is an economically important vegetable crop worldwide, and cucumber fruit spine density has an important impact on the commercial value. However, little is known about the regulatory mechanism for the fruit spine formation.In this study, the transcriptome analyses of ovaries and pericarps from numerous-spine parent and few-spine parent were conducted to identify the gene regulatory networks involved in the formation and development of numerous fruit spines in cucumber. Methods: Cucumber mRNA profiles of ovaries and pericarps from numerous-spine parent and few-spine parent were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina HiSeq 4000. Then, clean data (clean reads) were obtained by removing reads containing adapters, reads containing poly-N sequences and low-quality reads from the raw data. Simultaneously, the Q20, Q30 and GC contents of the clean data were calculated. All of the downstream analyses were based on the high-quality clean data. Clean paired-end reads were mapped to the reference genome using TopHat v2.0.12 (Trapnell et al. 2012). Then, the FPKM (fragments per kilobase of transcript sequence per million base pairs sequenced) value of each gene was calculated to estimate gene expression levels (Trapnell et al. 2010). Genes with an adjusted P-value < 0.05 identified by DESeq were assigned as differentially expressed genes(DEGs). Results: We generated 42.96-57.53 million raw reads from each library, and 39.85-54.02 million clean reads were obtained after the removal of low-quality reads and adapter sequences. Among the clean reads, 79.03-80.94% were mapped to the gene database . Based on the KEGG database, pathway enrichment analysis was performed to identify significantly enriched metabolic pathways or signal transduction pathways in DEGs. Plant hormone signal transduction was significantly enriched in up-regulated genes in both F_6DBF compared with M_6DBF and F_0DAA compared with M_0DAA. Conclusions: Based on the transcriptome analysis, we excavated possible biological regulatory networks involved in the formation and development of numerous fruit spines in cucumber. This work will promote the exploration of molecular mechanisms that regulate cucumber fruit spine density.
Project description:Purpose: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized systems-based analysis of gene expression profiles of cucumber under short-term chilling stress. The goals of this study are to transcriptome analysis of cucumber leaves under chilling stress. Methods: mRNA profiles of seedlings exposed to an air temperature of 6°C in the absence of light at 0, 2, 6, and 12 h were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina Hiseq platform. The reference genome and gene model annotation files were downloaded from the genome website (http://cucurbitgenomics.org/). An index of the reference genome was built using Bowtie v.2.2.3 and paired-end clean reads were aligned to the reference genome using TopHat v.2.0.12. qRT–PCR validation was performed using SYBR Green assays. Results: A total of 55.7 million clean reads was generated. Based on the threshold values of absolute value of log2 ratio ≥ 1 and FDR ≤ 0.05, a total of 2113 DEGs was identified at three time points (2, 6, and 12 h). A total of 30 genes was detected at all time points. The number of DEGs increased with time. In total, 100 TFs from 22 families in three subsets were detected. And 19 kinase families were identified in three subsets. The DEGs identified by RNA sequencing were confirmed by qRT-PCR analysis, indicating that the data were reliable. These findings provide information that can be useful for investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the response to chilling stress in cucumber and other plants. Conclusions: The results presented here reveal changes in the transcriptome profile of cucumber in response to chilling stress. Exposure to a low temperature induced genes involved in hormone regulation, lipid metabolism, and photosynthesis, including NAC, WRKY, AP2/ERF, ERD, MYB as well as zinc finger TFs and protein kinases such as receptor-like protein kinase, MAPK, and CDK. Most TFs were upregulated whereas CDKs were downregulated. These findings provide information that can be useful for investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying the response to chilling stress in cucumber and other plants.
Project description:Genotyping arrays are tools for high throughput genotyping, which is required in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Since the first cucumber genome draft was reported, genetic maps were constructed mainly based on simple-sequence repeats (SSRs) or on combinations of SSRs and other sequence-related amplified polymorphism (SRAP). In this study we developed the first cucumber genotyping array which consisted of 32,864 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). These markers cover the cucumber genome every 2.1Kb and have parents/F1 hybridizations as a training set. The training set was validated with Fludigm technology and had 98% concordance. The application of the genotyping array was illustrated by constructed a genetic map of 600 cM in length based on recombinant inbred lines (RIL) population of a 9930XGy14 cross of which compromise of 11564 SNPs. The markers collinearity between the genetic map and genome references of the two parents estimated as R2=0.97. Moreover, this comparison supports a translocation in the beginning of chromosome 5 that occurred in the lineage of 9930 and Gy14 as well as local variation in the recombination rate. We also used the array to investigate the local allele frequencies along the cucumber genome and found specific region with segregation distortions. We believe that the genotyping array together with the training set would be a powerful tool in applications such as quantitative-trait loci (QTL) analysis and GWAS.
Project description:The carpel number (CN) is an important fruit trait affecting fruit shape, size, and internal quality in cucumber. CsCLAVATA3 (CsCLV3) was previously showed to be the simply inherited gene responsible for carpel number variation in cucumber, but the molecular mechanism of CsCLV3 regulating carpel number remains elusive. Here, we found that the expression of CsCLV3 was negatively correlated with carpel number variation in different cucumber lines. Knock down of CsCLV3 by RNAi led to increased number of petals and carpels, suggesting that CsCLV3 functions as a negative regulator for floral organ number in cucumber. WUSCHEL (WUS) has been well characterized to promote CLV3-expressing stem cell activity in a non-cell autonomous manner to regulate meristem maintenance and floral organ number. However, here we found the expression region of CsCLV3 overlaps with CsWUS in the basal domain of meristem, and CsCLV3 interact with CsWUS at the protein level through binding to the WUS-box motif. Overexpression of CsFUL1, a FRUITFULL-like MADS-box gene involved in fruit length regulation, resulted in increased number of floral organs in cucumber. Biochemical analyses indicated that CsFUL1 can directly bind to CsWUS promoter to stimulate its expression. Further, we found that auxin participates in carpel number variation in cucumber through physical interaction of AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 14 (CsARF14) and CsWUS. Therefore, CsFUL1 and CsARF14 are two new players in the WUS-CLV pathway in determining carpel number variation in cucumber.