Transcriptomic response of durum wheat to cold stress at reproductive stage

SORESI, DANIELA S.*; DÍAZ, MARINA L.*; BASUALDO, JESSICA; CUPPARI, SELVA J.; CARRERA, ALICIA

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY REPORTS

SPRINGER

Año: 2019

0301-4851

Understanding the genetic basis of cold tolerance is a key step towards obtaining new and improved crop varieties. Currentgeographical distribution of durum wheat in Argentina exposes the plants to frost damage when spikes have already emerged.Biochemical pathways involved in cold tolerance are known to be early activated at above freezing temperatures. In thisstudy we reported the transcriptome of CBW0101 spring durum wheat by merging data from untreated control and cold(5 °C) treated plant samples at reproductive stage. A total of 128,804 unigenes were predicted. Near 62% of the unigeneswere annotated in at least one database. In total 876 unigenes were differentially expressed (DEGs), 562 were up-regulatedand 314 down-regulated in treated samples. DEGs are involved in many critical processes including, photosynthetic activity,lipid and carbohydrate synthesis and accumulation of amino acids and seed proteins. Twenty-eight transcription factors(TFs) belonging to 14 families resulted differentially expressed from which eight families comprised of only TFs inducedby cold. We also found 31 differentially expressed Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), most of them up-regulated in treatedplants. Two of these lncRNAs could operate via microRNAs (miRNAs) target mimic. Our results suggest a reprogrammingof expression patterns in CBW0101 that affects a number of genes that is closer to the number reported in winter genotypes.These observations could partially explain its moderate tolerance (low proportion of frost-damaged spikes) when exposedto freezing days in the field.