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Transcriptome analysis reveals the effects of grafting on sweetpotato scions during the full blooming stages

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Abstract

Background

Sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas) is a hexaploid plant and generally most genotypes do not flower at all in sub-tropics. Heterografting was carried out between sweetpotato cultivar ‘Xushu 18’ and Japanese morning glory (Ipomoea nil). With sweetpotato as ‘scion’ and I. nil as ‘rootstock’, sweetpotato was induced flowering in the autumn. However, little is known about the molecular mechanisms underlying sweetpotato responses to grafting, especially during the full blooming stages.

Objectives

To investigate the poorly understood molecular responses underlying the grafting-induced phenotypic processes in sweetpotato at full anthesis.

Methods

In this study, to explore the transcriptome diversity and complexity of sweetpotato, PacBio Iso-Seq and Illumina RNA-seq analysis were combined to obtain full-length transcripts and to profile the changes in gene expression of five tissues: scion flowers (SF), scion leaves (SL), scion stems (SS), own-rooted leaves (OL) and own-rooted stems (OS).

Results

A total of 138,151 transcripts were generated with an average length of 2255 bp, and more than 72% (100,396) of the transcripts were full-length. During full blooming, to examine the difference in gene expression of sweetpotato under grafting and natural growth conditions, 7905, 7795 and 15,707 differentially expressed genes were detected in pairwise comparisons of OS versus SS, OL versus SL and SL versus SF, respectively. Moreover, differential transcription of genes associated with anthocyanin biosynthesis, light pathway and photosynthesis, ethylene signal transduction pathway was observed in scion responses to grafting.

Conclusion

Our study is useful in understanding the molecular basis of grafting-induced flowering in grafted sweetpotatoes, and will lay a foundation for further research on sweetpotato breeding in the future.

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Availability of data

The PacBio SMRT reads and the Illumina SGS reads generated in this study are available from the SRA at NCBI (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/) under the accession number SRR8039404-SRR8039421 and SRR8002978-SRR8002982.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31471448, 31101119).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Bio-resources and Eco-environment, Ministry of Education, Sichuan Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, China

    Changhe Wei, Ming Li, Jia Qin, Yunfan Xu, Yizheng Zhang & Haiyan Wang

  2. Institute of Biotechnology and Nuclear Technology, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, 610061, China

    Ming Li

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  1. Changhe Wei
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Wei, C., Li, M., Qin, J. et al. Transcriptome analysis reveals the effects of grafting on sweetpotato scions during the full blooming stages. Genes Genom 41, 895–907 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-019-00823-9

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