Perigone Lobe Transcriptome Analysis Provides Insights into Rafflesia cantleyi Flower Development
Rafflesia is a biologically enigmatic species that is very rare in occurrence and possesses an extraordinary morphology. This parasitic plant produces a gigantic flower up to one metre in diameter with no leaves, stem or roots. However, little is known about the floral biology of this species esp...
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Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , , , |
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Published: |
2016
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://eprints.intimal.edu.my/709/1/journal.pone..pdf http://eprints.intimal.edu.my/709/ |
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Summary: | Rafflesia is a biologically enigmatic species that is very rare in occurrence and possesses
an extraordinary morphology. This parasitic plant produces a gigantic flower up to one
metre in diameter with no leaves, stem or roots. However, little is known about the floral biology
of this species especially at the molecular level. In an effort to address this issue, we
have generated and characterised the transcriptome of the Rafflesia cantleyi flower, and
performed a comparison with the transcriptome of its floral bud to predict genes that are
expressed and regulated during flower development. Approximately 40 million sequencing
reads were generated and assembled de novo into 18,053 transcripts with an average
length of 641 bp. Of these, more than 79% of the transcripts had significant matches to
annotated sequences in the public protein database. A total of 11,756 and 7,891 transcripts
were assigned to Gene Ontology categories and clusters of orthologous groups respectively.
In addition, 6,019 transcripts could be mapped to 129 pathways in Kyoto Encyclopaedia
of Genes and Genomes Pathway database. Digital abundance analysis identified 52
transcripts with very high expression in the flower transcriptome of R. cantleyi. Subsequently,
analysis of differential expression between developing flower and the floral bud
revealed a set of 105 transcripts with potential role in flower development. Our work presents
a deep transcriptome resource analysis for the developing flower of R. cantleyi. Genes
potentially involved in the growth and development of the R. cantleyi flower were identified
and provide insights into biological processes that occur during flower development. |
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