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Low pH stress responsive transcriptome of seedling roots in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

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Abstract

Soil acidification is one of major problems limiting crop growth and especially becoming increasingly serious in China owing to excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer. Only the STOP1 of Arabidopsis was identified clearly sensitive to proton rhizotoxicity and the molecular mechanism for proton toxicity tolerance of plants is still poorly understood. The main objective of this study was to investigate the transcriptomic change in plants under the low pH stress. The low pH as a single factor was employed to induce the response of the wheat seedling roots. Wheat cDNA microarray was used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). A total of 1057 DEGs were identified, of which 761 genes were up-regulated and 296 were down-regulated. The greater percentage of up-regulated genes involved in developmental processes, immune system processes, multi-organism processes, positive regulation of biological processes and metabolic processes of the biological processes. The more proportion of down-regulation genes belong to the molecular function category including transporter activity, antioxidant activity and molecular transducer activity and to the extracellular region of the cellular components category. Moreover, most genes among 41 genes involved in ion binding, 17 WAKY transcription factor genes and 17 genes related to transport activity were up-regulated. KEGG analysis showed that the jasmonate signal transduction and flavonoid biosynthesis might play important roles in response to the low pH stress in wheat seedling roots. Based on the data, it is can be deduced that WRKY transcription factors might play a critical role in the transcriptional regulation, and the alkalifying of the rhizosphere might be the earliest response process to low pH stress in wheat seedling roots. These results provide a basis to reveal the molecular mechanism of proton toxicity tolerance in plants.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by Science and Technology Program of Henan Province, China (Grant No. 142102110041). Project supported by the State Key Development Program for Research of China (Grant No. 2017YFD0100705).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science and Technology, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Xinxiang, 453003, Henan, China

    Haiyan Hu, Jie He, Junjie Zhao, Xingqi Ou, Hongmin Li & Zhengang Ru

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center of Modern Biological Breeding, Xinxiang, 453003, Henan, China

    Haiyan Hu, Xingqi Ou & Zhengang Ru

  3. Henan Engineering Research Center of Crop Genome Editing, Xinxiang, 453003, Henan, China

    Haiyan Hu & Hongmin Li

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  1. Haiyan Hu
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  2. Jie He
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Correspondence to Haiyan Hu or Zhengang Ru.

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Haiyan Hu, Jie He, Junjie Zhao, Xingqi Ou, Hongmin Li and Zhengang Ru declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Hu, H., He, J., Zhao, J. et al. Low pH stress responsive transcriptome of seedling roots in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Genes Genom 40, 1199–1211 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-018-0680-6

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