RNA-seq and de novo assembly of sexual and apomictic floral transcriptomes of Paspalum notatum. A key database for studying apomixis candidate genes

ORTIZ JPA; REVALE, S; SIENA L; PODIO M; DELGADO L; STEIN J; LEBLANC O; PESSINO SC

Bahía Blanca

Workshop; V CICLO DE SEMINARIOS SOBRE AVANCES EN LA CARACTERIZACIÓN GENÉTICA Y MOLECULAR DE LA APOMIXIS; 2016

Centro de Recursos Naturales Renovables de la Zona Semiárida, CONICET-UNS

The objectives of this work were: 1) to produce robust reference transcriptome datasets from flowers of sexual and apomictic genotypes, and 2) to deliver a list of transcripts with differential representation between sexual and apomictic types. A long-read 454/Roche FLX+ sequencing strategy was used for database construction. Raw data originated from sexual and apomictic flowers collected from premeiosis to anthesis was used to assembly three libraries: i) sexual, ii) apomictic and iii) global (including both reads). The global assembly produced 48,842 floral transcripts, including 67,617 allelic variants. A group of physically-supported mRNA and EST sequences was matched with high level of confidence to both sexual and apomictic libraries. Dozens of molecular functions and biological pathways operating in P. notatum flowers were identified. A preliminary trial allowed discovery of the whole set of putative alleles/paralogs corresponding to 23 previously identified apomixis-associated candidate genes. Moreover, a list of 3,732 genes and several co-expression networks differentially represented between both plant types were detected. The reference floral transcriptomes reported here will be of interest to plant reproductive research and Paspalum breeding projects.