title: Perigone Lobe Transcriptome Analysis Provides Insights into Rafflesia cantleyi Flower Development.
abstract: Rafflesia is a biologically enigmatic species that is very rare in occurrence and possesses an extraordinary morphology. This parasitic plant produces a gigantic flower up to one metre in diameter with no leaves, stem or roots. However, little is known about the floral biology of this species especially at the molecular level. In an effort to address this issue, we have generated and characterised the transcriptome of the Rafflesia cantleyi flower, and performed a comparison with the transcriptome of its floral bud to predict genes that are expressed and regulated during flower development. Approximately 40 million sequencing reads were generated and assembled de novo into 18,053 transcripts with an average length of 641 bp. Of these, more than 79% of the transcripts had significant matches to annotated sequences in the public protein database. A total of 11,756 and 7,891 transcripts were assigned to Gene Ontology categories and clusters of orthologous groups respectively. In addition, 6,019 transcripts could be mapped to 129 pathways in Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes Pathway database. Digital abundance analysis identified 52 transcripts with very high expression in the flower transcriptome of R. cantleyi. Subsequently, analysis of differential expression between developing flower and the floral bud revealed a set of 105 transcripts with potential role in flower development. Our work presents a deep transcriptome resource analysis for the developing flower of R. cantleyi. Genes potentially involved in the growth and development of the R. cantleyi flower were identified and provide insights into biological processes that occur during flower development.
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Xin-Wei
authors.initials: XW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Malaysia Genome Institute, Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Mohd-Noor
authors.initials: MN
authors.lastname: Mat-Isa
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Nur-Atiqah
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Mohd-Elias
authors.affiliation: School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Mohd Afiq
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Aizat-Juhari
authors.affiliation: Institute of Systems Biology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Hoe-Han
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.affiliation: Mote Research Limited, Babraham Hall, Babraham Research Campus, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Paul H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Dear
authors.affiliation: Genomics and Bioinformatics Centre, Malaysian Rubber Board, Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia, Sungai Buloh, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Keng-See
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Chow
authors.affiliation: School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Jumaat
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Haji Adam
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Rahmah
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mohamed
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.|Institute of Systems Biology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Mohd
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Firdaus-Raih
authors.affiliation: School of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Kiew-Lian
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Wan
mesh_terms: D035264:Flowers / Q000235:genetics*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D019684:Magnoliopsida / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome / Q000235:genetics*