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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Understanding the heat resistance of cucumber through leaf transcriptomics

Min Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7493-316X A B , Xiaoming He A B , Qin Peng C , Zhaojun Liang A , Qingwu Peng A , Wenrui Liu A B , Biao Jiang A B , Dasen Xie A B , Lin Chen A B , Jinqiang Yan A B and Yu’e Lin A C D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Vegetable Research Institute, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangzhou 510640, China.

B Guangdong Key Laboratory for New Technology Research of Vegetables, Guangzhou 510640, China.

C School of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, 510631, China.

D Corresponding author. Email: cucumber200@163.com

Functional Plant Biology 47(8) 704-715 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP19209
Submitted: 19 July 2019  Accepted: 26 January 2020   Published: 3 June 2020

Abstract

Heat stress is a major environmental factor limiting plant productivity and quality in agriculture. Cucumber, one of the most important vegetables among cucurbitaceae, prefers to grow in a warm environment. Until now the molecular knowledge of heat stress in cucumber remained unclear. In this study, we performed transcriptome analysis using two diverse genetic cucumber cultivars, L-9 and A-16 grown under normal and heat stress. L-9 displayed heat-tolerance phenotype with higher superoxide dismutase enzyme (SOD) enzyme activity and lower malondialdehyde (MDA) content than A-16 under heat stress. RNA-sequencing revealed that a total of 963 and 2778 genes are differentially expressed between L-9 and A-16 under normal and heat stress respectively. In addition, we found that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with plant hormones signally pathway, transcription factors, and secondary metabolites showed significantly change in expression level after heat stress, which were confirmed by quantitative real-time PCR assay. Our results not only explored several crucial genes involved in cucumber heat resistance, but also provide a new insight into studying heat stress.

Additional keywords: DEGs, differentially expressed genes, heat stress, RNA-seq.


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