Transcriptome sequencing of the southernmost Patagonian tree species, Nothofagus pumilio

ESTRAVIS BARCALÁ, M.; ARANA ,MV; GUILLOUX, E.; HEER, K.; ZIEGENHAGEN, B; MARCHELLI, P

Foz de Iguazú

Congreso; 11° International Congress of Plant Molecular Biology; 2015

Temperate Patagonian forests are distributed along natural environmental gradients that might be imposing different selection pressures on the native flora. Nothofagus pumilio, a highly important timber species, is distributed across a wide latitudinal range and forms the tree line at high altitudes in the Northern part of its distribution area. Thus, N. pumilio grows in zones with contrasting thermic and photoperiodic characteristics and constitutes an interesting model for predicting the fitness of trees along environmental gradients under different climatic scenarios, as those predicted by the Climate Change (CC). Simulations of CC for Patagonia indicate a rise in the daily mean temperatures and a decrease in precipitations, affecting the current ecological niches of relevant tree species. The aim of this work was to study the effect of temperature on gene expression in N. pumilio seedlings. For this purpose we performed RNA-seq from seedlings exposed to contrasting temperatures (20°C and 34° C), and analysed the effect of high temperatures (34°C) on global patterns of gene expression. For both temperatures we sequenced two biological replicates (total of four libraries) consisting of 10 pooled seedlings each. Library sequencing was conducted on the IonTorrent Proton platform. These data provide i) a basic resource which is the novo assembly of the first transcriptome for N. pumilio, ii) global expression patterns, iii) a first step to understand temperature-driven differential expression, and iv) to design assays for SNPs in candidate genes for genetic studies of populations across the temperature and latitudinal gradients described above.