Identification of candidate genes involved in the determinism of pollen grain aperture morphology by comparative transcriptome analysis in Papaveraceae. undefined

Pollen aperture, areas of the wall where the exine is weakened or absent, are very varied in shape, number and position. In terms of shape, apertures can be elongated or round, both being present in all taxonomic groups of angiosperms and each being more adapted to certain environmental conditions. In the last decade some genes involved in the formation of pollen apertures have been discovered. However, only a protein family (ELMOD) has been found in Arabidopsis that acts upstream of the aperture formation pathway and in which the interaction of one of its members ELMOD_E with two other MCR/ELMOD_B and ELMOD_A can change the morphology of apertures from colpus (elongate) to pore (round). Here, we are prompted to identify candidate genes involved in the determinism of pollen aperture morphology in Papaveraceae (order Ranunculales) by comparative transcriptome analysis between two pairs of taxa with different aperture morphology. We found 531 DEGs between the colpate and porate pollen species groups that are not differentially expressed within each group. The expression levels obtained by qRT-PCR validate those obtained by transcriptome analysis. Among the DEGs we did not find any member of the ELMOD family, the only ones discovered so far that could be involved in determining the shape of pollen grain apertures. However, we did find genes related to the formation of the callose wall or the organisation of the cytoskeleton, processes involved in the formation of the apertures