title: Comparative transcriptome analysis of fruiting body and sporulating mycelia of Villosiclava virens reveals genes with putative functions in sexual reproduction.
abstract: Sexual reproduction of heterothallic clavicipitaceous fungus Villosiclava virens (anamorph: Ustilaginoidea virens) generates ascospores, which is considered as primary infection source of rice false smut disease. However, little is known about the molecular underpinnings of sexual reproduction in V. virens. In this study, transcriptomes of V. virens in fruiting body (FB) and sporulating mycelia (SM) were compared using Illumina paired-end sequencing technology. A total of 33,384,588 and 23,765,275 clean reads of FB and SM transcriptome profiles could be used to map cDNA of V. virens, respectively. We evaluated the gene expression variations between FB and SM, a total of 488 genes therein were significantly higher expressed in FB than SM, and 342 genes were significantly higher expressed genes in SM than FB. These differentially expressed genes were annotated using Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes and Gene Ontology databases. Several genes were found to specifically function in sexual reproduction, involving in mating type, pheromone synthesis, signaling transduction, transcription factors, and meiosis; additionally, a few of genes were presumed to function in conidia sporulation and infection. Comparative transcriptome analysis of V. virens during FB and SM provided an overview of gene expression profiles at the transcriptional level and provided hints to better understand the molecular mechanisms of sexual development. Additionally, the data presented here also proved benefit for mining of essential genes contributing to sexual conidiation and infection.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Jun-Jie
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Mi-Na
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Ya-Feng
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Nie
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Pathology and the Ministry of Agriculture Key Laboratory for Plant Pathology, China Agricultural University, 100193, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Wen-Xian
authors.initials: WX
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Le
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Yin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Ya-Hui
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ding
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Zhong-Qiang
authors.initials: ZQ
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, 59717-3150, USA.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant Protection, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, 210014, Nanjing, China. liuyf@jaas.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Yong-Feng
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D001203:Ascomycota / Q000502:physiology*; D019295:Computational Biology; D048690:Fruiting Bodies, Fungal; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015966:Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal; D063990:Gene Ontology; D005800:Genes, Fungal; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D025282:Mycelium; D059467:Transcriptome
keywords: Fruiting body; RNA-seq; Sexual reproduction; Ustilaginoidea virens