Publication Overview
Abstract Background: Prunus triloba Lindl. is a naturally salt-alkaline-tolerant plant with several unique characteristics, and it
can be used as the rootstock of Chinese plum (Prunus salicina Lindl.) in saline-alkaline soils. To comprehensively
investigate the alkaline acclimation mechanisms in P. triloba, a series of analyses were conducted under alkaline
stress, including analyses of the kinetics of molecular and physiological changes, and leaf microstructure.
Results: To understand the kinetics of molecular changes under short-term alkaline stress, we used Illumina HiSeq
2500 platform to identify alkaline stress-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in P. triloba. Approximately 53.0
million high-quality clean reads were generated from 59.6 million raw reads, and a total of 124,786 unigenes were
obtained after de novo assembly of P. triloba transcriptome data. After alkaline stress treatment, a total of 8948
unigenes were identified as DEGs. Based on these DEGs, a Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis was conducted,
suggesting that 28 genes may play an important role in the early alkaline stress response. In addition, analysis of
DEGs with the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) revealed that pathways were significant at different
treatment time points. A significant positive correlation was found between the quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) results
and the RNA-Seq data for seven alkaline-related genes, confirming the reliability of the RNA-Seq results. Based on
physiological analysis of P. triloba in response to long-term alkaline stress, we found that the internal microstructures of the
leaves of P. triloba changed to adapt to long-term alkaline stress. Various physiological indexes indicated that the degree of
membrane injury increased with increasing duration of alkaline stress, affecting photosynthesis in P. triloba seedlings.
Conclusions: This represents the first investigation into the physiology and transcriptome of P. triloba in response to
alkaline stress. The results of this study can enrich the genomic resources available for P. triloba, as well as deepening our
understanding of molecular and physiological alkaline tolerance mechanisms in P. triloba. This will also provide new
insights into our understanding of alkaline acclimation mechanisms in Chinese plum (Prunus salicina) trees.
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