Abstract
Background: Environment-sensitive genic male sterility is of vital importance to hybrid vigor in crop production and breeding, therefore, it is meaningful to identify and study the function of the genes related to pollen development and male sterility, which still not fully understanding currently. In this study, Yanzhan 4110S, a new thermo-sensitive genic male sterility (TGMS) wheat line, and its near isogenic line Yanzhan 4110 were carried out cytological features observation, bioinformatics analysis to investgate the abortion state and identified the genes involved in pollen development which have fertility regulation function. Barely stripe mosaic virus-induced gene silencing was used to verify the genes function.Results: Cytological analysis showed pollen abortion event of Yanzhan 4110S occur at the later uninucleate stage (Lun) under higher temperature induction (day/night temperatures of 22 °C/20 °C), when the anthers were collected and assessed for transcriptomic profiling through high-throughput sequencing. We then in-depth analyzed the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) by Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, the results showed that the occurrence of Yanzhan 4110S male-sterility most likely related to metabolic pathway, including phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in the biosynthesis of other secondary metabolites, starch and sucrose metabolism in carbohydrate metabolism, carbon fixation in photosynthetic organisms as well as carbon metabolism in energy metabolism. The weighted gene co-expression network analysis in the transcriptome profiles further identified some hub genes, where the key genes involved in those pathways were intersection between the unique DEGs of Yanzhan 4110S in anther and hub genes, totally 228 genes, which were highly related to pollen development including TaMut11 and TaSF3. Moreover, further verification through barely stripe mosaic virus-induced gene silencing elucidated that the silencing of TaMut11 and TaSF3 caused pollen abortion, finally resulting in the declination of fertility. So, the genes TaMut11 and TaSF3 are related to fertility conversion of Yanzhan 4110S.Conclusion: Through comparative transcriptome bioinformatics analysis, the genes TaMut11 and TaSF3 associated with pollen development and male sterility induced by high temperature were identified in Yanzhan 4110S, and verificated by barely stripe mosaic virus-induced gene silencing. These findings provided researching the abortive mechanism in environment-sensitive genic male sterility wheat.
A Foxtail mosaic virus Vector for Virus-Induced Gene Silencing in Maize
