Target of Rapamycin (TOR) Regulates the Expression of lncRNAs in Response to Abiotic Stresses in Cotton

Frontiers in Genetics

Xueyan Zhang¹  Yun Song¹  Lei Zheng¹  Fuguang Li¹  Chaojun Zhang¹  Zuoren Yang¹  Ge Zhao¹  Lingling Wang¹  Zhaoen Yang¹  Xiaoyang Ge¹  Huan Yin²  Maozhi Ren²  Fengping Zhuo²  Linxuan Li² 

[1] Institute of Cotton Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Anyang, China;School of Life Sciences, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China;Zhengzhou Research Base, State Key Laboratory of Cotton Biology, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China;

关键词: target of rapamycin;    expression pattern;    stress response;    cotton;    long non-coding RNA;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fgene.2018.00690

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

TOR (Target of Rapamycin) kinase is an evolutionarily conserved protein kinase, which integrates stress-related cues with growth and metabolic outputs. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a vital role in the regulation of eukaryotic genes. However, little is known about TOR's function in regulating the expression of lncRNAs in plants. In this study, four putative homologous genes encoding the TOR protein were identified by utilizing the recently completed cotton genome. Pharmacological experiments with TOR inhibitor AZD8055 and on silencing GhTOR genes resulted in obvious cotton growth retardation, indicating the conserved role of TOR in plant growth. The expression pattern analyses in different tissues reveal that TOR may play a role in root development, and the transcript levels of TOR genes were changed under different stress conditions. Importantly, we found TOR may be a key player in regulating the expression of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). A total of 10,315 lncRNAs were discovered in cotton seedlings, 90.7% of which were long intergenic ncRNAs. Moreover, we identified the differentially expressed lncRNAs, of which 296 were significantly upregulated and 105 were downregulated in TOR inactivated plants. GO and KEGG analyses of differentially expressed lncRNA neighboring genes reveal that these differentially expressed lncRNA-targeted genes are involved in many life processes, including stress response, glutathione, and ribosomes in cotton. A series of differentially expressed lncRNAs potentially involved in plant stress response was identified under TOR inhibition. Collectively, these results suggest that cotton TOR proteins may directly modulate the expression of putative stress-related lncRNAs and eventually play a potential role in the cotton stress response.

【 授权许可】

Unknown