De novo assembly and analysis of tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum Garetn.) transcriptome discloses key regulators involved in salt-stress response

We conducted transcriptome comparison between control and salt treatment to identify potential regulatory components involved in F. tataricum salt responses. A total of 53.15 million clean reads from control and salt-treated libraries were produced via an llumina sequencing approach. Then we de novo assembled these reads into a transcriptome dataset containing 57921 unigenes with N50 length of 1400 bp and total length of 44.5 Mb. A total of 36688 unigenes could find matches in public databases. GO, KEGG and KOG classification suggested the enrichment of these unigenes in 56 sub-categories, 25 KOG, and 273 pathways, respectively. Comparison of the transcriptome expression patterns between control and salt treatment unveiled 455 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Further, we found the genes encoding for protein kinases, phosphatases, heat shock proteins (HSPs), ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs), abiotic-related transcription factors and circadian clock might be relevant to the salinity adaption of this species. Thus, this study offers an insight into the salt tolerance mechanisms, and will serve as useful genetic information for tolerant elites breeding programs in future. mRNA profiles of 2-week old control and salt-treated seedlings were generated by deep sequencing, using Illumina Hiseq 2500.