Transcriptome Analysis of Salt Stress Response in Roots of Halophyte Zoysia macrostachya

Zoysia macrostachya Franch. et Sav. is a halophyte with very strong tolerance to salinity, which can serve as an alternative turfgrass for landscaping in saline-alkali land and provide the salt-tolerance genes for turfgrass breeding. To further illustrate the salt-tolerance mechanisms in this species at molecular level, the roots transcriptome of Z. macrostachya was investigated under salt stress using the Illumina sequencing platform. Altogether 47,325 unigenes were assembled, among which, 32,542 (68.76%) were annotated, and 87.61% clean reads were mapped to the unigenes. Specifically, 14,558 unigenes were shown to be the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) following exposure to 710 mM NaCl stress compared with control, including 7972 up-regulated and 6586 down-regulated DEGs. Among these DEGs, 24 were associated with the reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging system, 61 were found to be related to K+ and Na+ transportation, and 16 were related to the metabolism of osmotic adjustment substances. Additionally, 2327 DEGs that encoded the transcription factors (TFs) were also identified. The expression profiles for 10 DEGs examined through quantitative real-time PCR conformed to the individual alterations of transcript abundance verified through RNA-Seq. Taken together, results of transcriptome analysis in this study provided useful insights for salt-tolerance molecular mechanisms of Z. macrostachya. Furthermore, these DEGs under salt stress provided important clues for future salt-tolerance genes cloning of Z. macrostachya. © 2021 Friends Science Publishers