Characterization of leaf transcriptome in a tropical tree species, shorea curtisii, over a flowering season

• Main Authors: Suhaimi, Ahmad Husaini, Kobayashi, Masaki J., Satake, Akiko, Lee, Soon Leong, Muhammad, Norwati, Otani, Tatsuya, Kondo, Toshiaki, Tani, Naoki, Yeoh, Suat Hui
• Format: Article
• Published: Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences 2023
• Subjects: Q Science (General); QH301 Biology
• Online Access: http://eprints.um.edu.my/39118/
• Institution: Universiti Malaya

General flowering (GF) is a synchronous flowering phenomenon in the Southeast Asian tropical rainforests that occurs at irregular intervals of multiple years. While in this study, the leaf transcriptome of a GF species, Shorea curtisii obtained from three-time points - before and after floral initiation, and post-flowering stage - was sequenced, the unpredictable intervals of GF raise conservation concerns for these under-researched forests with rich economically and ecologically important species. We assembled 243,759,478 sequencing reads into 39,943 non-redundant unigenes including 677 putative homologs of Arabidopsis thaliana flowering-related genes. Differential expression analysis conducted on pairwise comparisons of the time points identified 930 differentially expressed unigenes, which includes 17 flowering-related homologs. The differential expression of unigenes with significant enrichments of functions related to drought corroborated the involvement of drought as an environmental cue for GF, with th