Meifang Peng^1* , Feng Lin^1* , Junyan Feng¹ , Cong Zhang¹ , Songtao Yang² , Bin He³ , Zhigang Pu¹ , Wenfang Tan² , Ming Li¹

1 Institute of Biotechnology and Nuclear Technology, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, 610061, Sichuan province, China
2 Crop Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, 610066, Sichuan province, China
3 Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Bio-Resource and Eco-Environment, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, Sichuan province, China
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2017, Vol. 8, No. 11   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2017.08.0011
Received: 22 Aug., 2017    Accepted: 12 Sep., 2017    Published: 05 Dec., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Peng M.F., Lin F., Feng J.Y., Zhang C., Yang S.T., He B., Pu Z.G., Tan W.F., and Li M., 2017, Comparative transcriptome to reveal the drought tolerance mechanism in Hexaploid Ipomoea trifida, Molecular Plant Breeding, 8(11): 100-112 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2017.08.0011)

Hexaploid Ipomoea trifida (I.trifida), a wild relative of sweetpotato[Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam.], has plentiful superior genes and a variety of anti-adversity characteristics genetically, and used as a distant hybridization materials in sweetpotato breeding. However, insufficient transcriptomic and genomic resources of hexaploid I.trifida are available for understanding the molecular mechanism underlying drought tolerance. In this study, we are the first to report a reference transcriptome using leaf, stem and root tissues under drought-stressed condition from hexaploid I.trifida, which is helpful to generate a large number of transcripts associated with drought tolerance for gene discovery. In this study, a total of 191,231, 226,262, and 171,841 contigs with a mean length of 1,100, 1,038 and 1,106 bp were obtained from the three tissues, respectively. In our assembled sequences, 62.38%, 50.08% and 47.76% of all contigs in the three tissues could be annotated to the nr database. Based on the Gene ontology (GO) analysis, 39,193, 49,997 and 34,887 contigs in leaves, roots and stems could assign with GO terms, and totaled 69 contigs up-regulated expression. In the annotated genes, we identified six transcription factors and two genes involved in drought-stress responses. Furthermore, the gene expression profiles of 15 putative genes associated with drought tolerance were analyzed to verify the reliability of the transcriptome using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). These results provide a foundation for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying drought stress of hexaploid I.trifida, and promoting its further utilization in sweetpotato breeding.

Ipomoea trifida; Hexaploid; Drought stress; Transcriptome; qRT-PCR, Sweetpotato