Transcriptome Sequencing and Analysis of Chilling Tolerance Mutant Tomato under Low Temperature

Abstract

Τhe tomato plant (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is particularly vulnerable to chilling injury. Hence research on screening out the cold-resistance gene in tomato is essential to improve tomato yield and quality. We investigated the gene expression profiles of the cold resistant mutant tomato (M) and wildtype tomato (CK), in response to cold stress using transcriptome and DEG analysis. Results showed that 1007 genes were significantly upregulated and 502 genes downregulated in 1509 DEGs of CKUC/CKC, 751 genes upregulated and 647 genes downregulated in 1398 DEGs of MUC/MC. There were 726 differential genes with significant change between M and CK screened and annotated. Analysis of unitranscripts indicated that 9 and 16 gene ontology terms were enriched significantly in CKUC/CKC and MUC/MC, respectively. In the further analysis of the KEGG pathways for different genes, the biosynthesis of flavonoids and phenylpropanoids was found significantly enriched in MUC/MC, thus being important in the biosynthesis pathway. We selected the important upregulated genes from the metabolism and biosynthetic pathways to lay the foundation for acquiring transgenic tomato with evident cold resistance.