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Acta Agronomica Sinica ›› 2024, Vol. 50 ›› Issue (8): 1896-1906.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1006.2024.43007

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• CROP GENETICS & BREEDING·GERMPLASM RESOURCES·MOLECULAR GENETICS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Superior allele genes mining for drought tolerance in maize based on introgression line from a cross between maize and teosinte

LIU Shuang(), LI Shen, WANG Dong-Mei, SHA Xiao-Qian, HE Guan-Hua, ZHANG Deng-Feng, LI Yong-Xiang, LIU Xu-Yang, WANG Tian-Yu, LI Yu, LI Chun-Hui()   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Resources and Breeding / Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, China
  • Received:2024-01-24 Accepted:2024-04-01 Online:2024-08-12 Published:2024-04-22
  • Contact: * E-mail: lichunhui@caas.cn
  • Supported by:
    China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA(CARS-02-03);Innovation Program of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences(CAAS-ZDRW202004)

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Abstract:

Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses affecting maize production. In order to explore new genes for drought tolerance in maize, the BC2F6 population constructed on the basis of teosinte and PH4CV was screened for the drought-tolerant introgression lines TP180 through the preliminary identification of drought tolerance at seedling stage. After drought stress, the TP180 was less wilting than its recurrent parent PH4CV, and the survival rate of TP180 was significantly higher than PH4CV after rehydration. Genome-wide genotypic identification revealed that introgression line TP180 contained 0.6% of the teosinte genome. By transcriptomic analysis of TP180 and PH4CV under different water conditions, a total of 2307 differentially expressed genes were identified between TP180 and PH4CV, and 122 of the differentially expressed genes were identified under both two drought stresses conditions. These genes were related to the growth hormone pathway, jasmonic acid pathway, etc., and contained multiple transcription factors. Integrating the differentially expressed genes and the analysis of introgression region containing the teosinte genome, two drought-resistant candidate genes (Zm00001d033050 and Zm00001d002025) were identified and further validated by RT-PCR. This study provides an important germplasm and information for mining drought-resistant gene of the teosinte.

Key words: maize, teosinte, introgression line, drought tolerance, transcriptomic analysis

Table 1

Primers used in this study"

引物名称Primer name 引物序列Primer sequence (5'-3')
GAPDH-F CCCTTCATCACCACGGACTAC
GAPDH-R AACCTTCTTGGCACCACCCT
ReTIFY9-F CAGCGGAACGTGCAGAAACA
ReTIFY9-R2 GCCTTGCGCTTCTCCATGAAC
ReEreb24-F CACCACTGCTACGCCAATG
ReEreb24-R ATTGAAAGCGACCGGGGTG

Fig. 1

Drought tolerance of TP180 and PH4CV with survival rate of drought treatments A: watered; B: moderate-drought; C: severe-drought; D: re-watered; E: survival rate. ** indicates significant difference at P < 0.01."

Fig. 2

Analysis of imported segments in teosinte"

Fig. 3

Number of differentially expressed genes under different treatments A: Venn diagram of all differentially expressed genes; B: total number of up- and down-regulated differential genes. WW: normal water (watered); MD: moderate-drought stress (moderate-drought); SD: severe-drought stress (severe-drought)"

Fig. 4

GO enrichment of differentially expressed genes under different treatments A: up-regulated differential genes of moderate-drought; B: down-regulated differential genes of moderate-drought; C: up-regulated differential genes of severe-drought; D: down-regulated differential genes of severe-drought."

Fig. 5

Relative expression profile of known drought resistance genes in differential expression under different treatments FPKM: the expression levels of genes with significant differences; WW: gene expression under normal water (watered) conditions; MD: gene expression under moderate drought stress (moderate-drought) conditions; SD: gene expression under severe drought stress (severe-drought) conditions. * and ** indicate significant difference at P < 0.05 and P < 0.01, respectively, and ns indicates no significance."

Fig. 6

Gene expression levels of candidate drought-resistant genes under different treatments A-B: the transcriptome data; C-D: the results of RT-PCR experiments; FPKM: the relative expression of genes with significant differences; Relative expression level is the relative expression level of genes by RT-PCR. WW: the relative expression of genes under normal watered conditions (watered); MD: the relative expression level of genes under moderate drought stress (moderate-drought); SD: the relative expression level of genes under severe drought stress (severe-drought); * and ** indicate significant difference at P < 0.05 and P < 0.01, respectively, and ns indicates no significance."

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