Transcriptome analysis of wheat grain using RNA-Seq

With the increase in consumer demand, wheat grain quality improvement has become a focus in China and worldwide. Transcriptome analysis is a powerful approach to research grain traits and elucidate their genetic regulation. In this study, two c DNA libraries from the developing grain and leaf-stem components of bread wheat cultivar, Nongda211, were sequenced using Roche/454 technology. There were 1061274 and 1516564 clean reads generated from grain and leaf-stem, respectively. A total of61393 high-quality unigenes were obtained with an average length of 1456 bp after de novo assembly. The analysis of the 61393 unigenes involved in the biological processes of the grain showed that there were 7355 differentially expressed genes upregulated in the grain library. Gene ontology enrichment and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment analysis showed that many transcription products and transcription factors associated with carbohydrate and protein metabolism were abundantly expressed in the grain. These results contribute to excavate genes associated with wheat quality and further study how they interact.