Long-Term Waterlogging as Factor Contributing to Hypoxia Stress Tolerance Enhancement in Cucumber: Comparative Transcriptome Analysis of Waterlogging Sensitive and Tolerant Accessions.

Abstract

Waterlogging (WL), excess water in the soil, is a phenomenon often occurring during plant cultivation causing low oxygen levels (hypoxia) in the soil. The aim of this study was to identify candidate genes involved in long-term waterlogging tolerance in cucumber using RNA sequencing. Here, we also determined how waterlogging pre-treatment (priming) influenced long-term memory in WL tolerant (WL-T) and WL sensitive (WL-S) i.e., DH2 and DH4 accessions, respectively. This work uncovered various differentially expressed genes (DEGs) activated in the long-term recovery in both accessions. De novo assembly generated 36,712 transcripts with an average length of 2236 bp. The results revealed that long-term waterlogging had divergent impacts on gene expression in WL-T DH2 and WL-S DH4 cucumber accessions: after 7 days of waterlogging, more DEGs in comparison to control conditions were identified in WL-S DH4 (8927) than in WL-T DH2 (5957). Additionally, 11,619 and 5007 DEGs were identified after a second waterlogging treatment in the WL-S and WL-T accessions, respectively. We identified genes associated with WL in cucumber that were especially related to enhanced glycolysis, adventitious roots development, and amino acid metabolism. qRT-PCR assay for hypoxia marker genes i.e., alcohol dehydrogenase (adh), 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate oxidase (aco) and long chain acyl-CoA synthetase 6 (lacs6) confirmed differences in response to waterlogging stress between sensitive and tolerant cucumbers and effectiveness of priming to enhance stress tolerance.

• Authors: Kinga Kęska, Michał Wojciech Szcześniak, Izabela Makałowska, Małgorzata Czernicka
• Journal: Genes (Genes (Basel)) Vol. 12 Issue 2 (01 28 2021) ISSN: 2073-4425 [Electronic] Switzerland
• PMID: 33525400 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)

Chemical References

• Biomarkers
• Plant Proteins

Topics

• Adaptation, Biological
• Biomarkers
• Computational Biology (methods)
• Cucumis sativus (physiology)
• Dehydration
• Gene Expression Profiling
• Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
• Hypoxia (genetics, metabolism)
• Molecular Sequence Annotation
• Phenotype
• Plant Proteins (genetics)
• Quantitative Trait, Heritable
• Stress, Physiological
• Transcriptome