Transcriptome analysis of dark grown wild-type and lon1-1 mutant seedlings

Intracellular selective proteolysis is an important protein quality control process for maintenance of protein homeostasis by removing either defective polypeptides or deleterious protein aggregates. The ATP-dependent Lon protease is a key component of protein quality control and highly conserved across the kingdoms of living organisms. In Arabidopsis thaliana Lon1 protease (AT5G26860) is dual targeted to mitochondria and chloroplasts. Lon1 mutant plants (lon1-1) exhibit a post-embryonic growth retardation phenotype accompanied with aberrant mitochondria morphology and reduced respiratory capacity. Here, we present the results of a deep RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) analysis to characterize the dynamic gene expression profile of Arabidopsis upon loss of Lon1 function. Col-0 (control) and lon1-1 mutant seedlings were grown for 6 days on Petri dishes in the dark. Samples were snap frozen in liquid nitrogen and total RNA was extracted from 3 independent biological replicates of Col-0 (control) and lon1-1 mutant plants. The stranded RNA-seq libraries were generated by BGI using the in-house rRNA Removal Library Construction Protocol and Sequencing was performed by a DNBSEQ G400 platform