Mol Biol Rep (2014) 41:505–517 DOI 10.1007/s11033-013-2886-7

Ning Zhang • Bailin Liu • Congyu Ma • Guodong Zhang • Jing Chang • Huaijun Si • Di Wang

N. Zhang B. Liu G. Zhang J. Chang H. Si (&) D. Wang (&) Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science, Gansu Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic and Germplasm Enhancement, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, People’s Republic of China e-mail: hjsi@gsau.edu.cn
D. Wang e-mail: wangd@gsau.edu.cn
N. Zhang C. Ma G. Zhang J. Chang H. Si College of Life Science and Technology, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, People’s Republic of China

Abstract Potato (Solanum tubersosum L.) is relatively vulnerable to abiotic stress conditions such as drought, but the tolerance mechanisms to such stress in potato are largely unknown. To gain insight into the transcriptome dynamics that are associated with drought stress, genomewide gene expression profile was conducted by Solexa sequencing to generate a large dataset and a comprehensive transcriptome profile for potato. Here, we report a reference for the potato transcriptome using leaf tissues under drought-stressed condition from a local potato cultivar ‘Longshu 3’. Analysis of 86,965,482 RNA-Seq reads permitted the detection and quantification of expression levels of 7,284 genes at transcriptional levels, among them, 6,754 genes were enriched in draught-treated leaves while 6,419 in control. We identified 842 drought-responsive up-regulated and 494 down-regulated candidate genes with significantly differentially expression under continued drought stress treatments. Those differently expressed genes were mostly enriched in 89 gene categories and 21 KEGG pathways. Drought-stressed leaves had increased expression of genes involved in stress response compared with control leaves. A subset of differentially expressed genes associated with drought response was examined using quantitative real-time PCR. These results provide a broad spectrum of candidate genes that are essential for understanding the molecular regulation of potato in response to abiotic stresses.
Keywords Potato mRNA-Seq Transcriptome Drought stress Leaf
Abbreviations DEG Differentially expressed genes ESTs Expressed sequence tags FPKM Fragments Per Kilobase of exon model per Million mapped reads qRT-PCR Quantitative real-time PCR