Transcriptomics analysis of Paeonia lactiflora Pall. in response to drought stress by high-throughput sequencing

Drought is an environmental stress that limits agricultural and horticultural production worldwide. Paeonia lactiflora Pall. is a perennial flowering plant with strong environmental adaptability and a good candidate for production in arid areas. Using the Illumina Hiseq platform to study the transcriptome of P. lactiflora leaves under drought stress, 62.27 Gb of clean data was obtained and 87,099 unigenes (N50 = 1,352 bp; mean length = 790.66 bp) were obtained by transcriptome sequencing. After screening 4,198 differentially expressed genes, genes that may be related to the response of P. lactiflora to drought stress were identified: 28 signal transduction genes, 12 protein kinase genes, 14 transcription factor genes, 35 osmotic adjustment genes, 14 antioxidase enzyme genes, 22 photosynthesis genes, 9 AQP genes, 20 HSP genes, and 17 LEA genes. Transcriptomics analysis revealed that transcription factors, such as ERF, WRKY, and NAC transcription factor family members regulate the synthesis of hormones that play a role in signal transduction pathways of peony in response to drought stress. These results enrich currently available herbaceous peony gene sequence resources, fortify the identification of candidate genes and molecular regulatory mechanisms in response to drought stress, allowing genetic engineering to be used to create drought-tolerant plants.