title: De novo transcriptome assembly for rudimentary leaves in Litchi chinesis Sonn. and identification of differentially expressed genes in response to reactive oxygen species.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Litchi is an evergreen woody tree widely cultivated in subtropical and tropical regions. Defective flowering is a major challenge for litchi production in time of climate change and global warming. Previous studies have shown that high temperature conditions encourage the growth of rudimentary leaves in panicles and suppress litchi flowering, while reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by methyl viologen dichloride hydrate (MV) promote flowering and abortion of rudimentary leaves. To understand the molecular function of the ROS-induced abortion of rudimentary leaves in litchi, we sequenced and de novo assembled the litchi transcriptome.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Our assembly encompassed 82,036 unigenes with a mean size of 710 bp, and over 58% (47,596) of unigenes showed significant similarities to known sequences in GenBank non-redundant (nr) protein database. 5,865 unigenes were found to be differentially expressed between ROS-treated and un-treated rudimentary leaves, and genes encoding signaling components of plant hormones such as ABA and ethylene were significantly enriched.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our transcriptome data represents the comprehensive collection of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) of litchi leaves, which is a vital resource for future studies on the genomics of litchi and other closely related species. The identified differentially expressed genes also provided potential candidates for functional analysis of genes involved in litchi flowering underlying the control of rudimentary leaves in the panicles.
authors.forename: Xingyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Hyeji
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Silin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.forename: Houbin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Zhiqun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.affiliation: College of Horticulture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China. zhoubiyan@scau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Biyan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D030562:Databases, Protein; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D017343:Genes, Plant; D032125:Litchi / Q000235:genetics*; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D010269:Paraquat / Q000633:toxicity; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species / Q000378:metabolism*; D060888:Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000187:drug effects
chemical_list: D017382:Reactive Oxygen Species; D010269:Paraquat