Differential Gene Expression Analysis in Polygonum minus Leaf upon 24 h of Methyl Jasmonate Elicitation

Polygonum minus is an herbal plant that grows in Southeast Asian countries andtraditionally used as medicine. This plant produces diverse secondary metabolitessuch as phenolic compounds and their derivatives, which are known to have roles inplant abiotic and biotic stress responses. Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) is a plant signalingmolecule that triggers transcriptional reprogramming in secondary metabolism andactivation of defense responses against many biotic and abiotic stresses. However, theeffect of MeJA elicitation on the genome-wide expression profile in the leaf tissue ofP. minus has not been well-studied due to the limited genetic information. Hence, weperformed Illumina paired-end RNA-seq for de novo reconstruction of P. minus leaftranscriptome to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in response to MeJAelicitation. A total of 182,111 unique transcripts (UTs) were obtained by de novo assemblyof 191.57 million paired-end clean reads using Trinity analysis pipeline. A total of 2374 UTswere identified to be significantly up-/down-regulated 24 h after MeJA treatment. TheseUTs comprising many genes related to plant secondary metabolite biosynthesis, defenseand stress responses. To validate our sequencing results, we analyzed the expression of21 selected DEGs by quantitative real-time PCR and found a good correlation betweenthe two analyses. The single time-point analysis in this work not only provides a usefulgenomic resource for P. minus but also gives insights on molecular mechanisms of stressresponses in P. minus.