Transcriptome analysis of Trunking and Non-trunking Metroxylon sagu leaf tissue

Sago palm is an important agricultural starch producing plant which contributes to the economics of Malaysia where the trunk is the main plant part which the starch is stored. However, there are sago palms that planted on peat soil failed to develop its trunk even after 17 years been planted. This phenomenon is known as 'non-trunking', which eliminates the economic value of the plants. Numeral researches have been done to address the phenomenon but the molecular mechanisms of sago palm respond toward the responsible stresses are still lacking. Therefore, in this study we collected samples from Trunking (Normal) and Non-Trunking sago palm leaf samples which planted on peat soil for total RNA extraction followed by next generation sequencing using BGISEQ-500 platform. The raw reads were cleaned and de novo assembled using TRINITY software package. Total of 40.11 Gb bases were sequenced from the sago palm leaf samples and after assembled producing 102,447 unigenes, with N50 score 1,809 bp and GC ratio of 44.34%. Unigenes by aligning with 7 (NR, NT, GO, KOG, KEGG, SwissProt & InterPro) functional databases and 65,523 (63.96%) unigenes were annotated. Functional annotation results in the detection of 46,335 Coding DNA sequences by Transdecoder. 30,039 Simple-sequence repeats distributed on 21,676 Unigenes were detected using Primer3 software, and 2,355 Transcription Factor coding Unigenes were predicted using getorf and hmmseach software. A total of 492 up-regulated and 444 down-regulated at least two-fold differential expressed gene were detected using DESeq2 algorithm with 95% confidence. Overall design: Comparison between trunking and non-trunking sago palm leaf tissue grant ID: RDCRG/CAT/2019/23 grant title: Sarawak Research Development Council Grant name of the funding source: Sarawak Research Development Council (SRDC) Grant information: grant ID: F07/TOC/1743/2018 grant title: Tun Openg Sago Chair Grant UNIMAS name of the funding source: Sarawak Government