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Dryad

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

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Oct 25, 2023 version files 4.21 MB

Abstract

General flowering (GF) is a synchronous flowering event in the Southeast Asian tropical rainforests that occurs at irregular intervals of multiple years. The unpredictable intervals of GF raise conservation concerns for these under-researched forests with rich economically and ecologically important species. 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. 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. The outcomes of this study offer an insight into the conservation of floral regulatory genes and pathways in Shorea and could be used as a model to better understand the floral initiation cues and regulation of GF trees.