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Transcriptome analysis reveals genes associated with leaf color mutants in Cymbidium longibracteatum

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Abstract

Cymbidium longibracteatum is an economically important Chinese orchid well known for its silver- or gold-colored leaf color patterns, and is desired for its ornamental value. In this study, we analyzed the yellow and green rhizomes from C. longibracteatum by deep RNA-sequencing. A total of 333,497 transcripts and 162,407 unigenes of ‘longchangsu’ obtained from 39.59 Gb of clean reads. Differentially expressed gene (DEG) analysis indicated that 497 genes were upregulated and 147 downregulated in the leaf color mutant. Five of these DEGs were involved in the phototransduction pathway, and 48 genes belonged to the plant-pathogen interaction pathway. Furthermore, we identified seven genes associated with the photosystem, six of which were upregulated, and one (psbA) was downregulated. Our results showed that downregulation of psbA gene may produce leaf color mutants under certain culture conditions that affect the D1 protein of photosystem II. All seven genes were validated by qRT-PCR. This study on genes related to photosystem and other pathways establishes a genetic foundation for ornamental orchids and may help to improve the economic and breeding values of C. longibracteatum.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on the manuscript.

Authors’ contribution statement

YJ and JH designed the experiments. QW, BZ, and QS performed the experiments. YJ analyzed the data. YJ and JH wrote the paper.

Data archiving statement

Genomic sequences and information of Cymbidium longibracteatum were deposited in the NCBI database (accession number: SRP145823, accessible with the following link: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/SRP145823).

Funding

This study was financially supported by the Applied Basic Research Project in Sichuan Province (2017JY0287).

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Correspondence to He Jun-Rong.

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Communicated by C. Dardick

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Fig. S1.

Length distribution of unigenes. (JPG 99 kb)

Fig. S2.

Photosynthesis pathway of psbA in C. 1ongibracteatum. (JPG 390 kb)

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Yu, J., Qiang, W., Qin-Qin, S. et al. Transcriptome analysis reveals genes associated with leaf color mutants in Cymbidium longibracteatum. Tree Genetics & Genomes 16, 44 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-020-01440-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11295-020-01440-4

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