prunus mume rna-seq 202007

Reproduction is a critical stage in flower development process, and its failure caused serious problem effecting fruit quality and yield. Pistil abortion is one of the main factor of unsuccessful reproduction and occurred in many fruit plants. In Japanese apricot, the problem of pistil abortion is very common and effect plant yield, however, its molecular mechanism is not clearly understood. Therefore, in the current study, we used RNA-seq method to find out the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and pathways actively involved in pistil abortion. A total of 11,519 differentially expressed genes were found and performed pairwise comparison analysis. According to KEGG pathway analysis, plant hormone signaling transduction and metabolic pathways were found most significantly enriched related to this study. A number of transcription factors like MADS-box, NAC and TCP showed their role in this process. RT-qPCR assays confirmed that the expression levels are in consistent with RNA-seq results. This study provides a basis for understanding molecular mechanism and their gene regulation under different processes during pistil abortion in Japanese apricot and provide reference for other fruit crops.