RETRACTED: Cadmium permeates through calcium channels and activates transcriptomic complexity in wheat roots in response to cadmium stress (Retracted article. See vol. 40, pg. 685, 2018)

Present study was conducted to elucidate the molecular regulation mechanisms and the critical genes involved in regulating wheat early responses to Cadmium (Cd) stress. Both ICP-AES and fluorescence labeling were used to find that the Cd2+ influx into wheat roots was significantly suppressed by pre-treatment with or in the presence of the Ca2+ channel blocker LaCl3, Verapamil and N-ethylmaleimide. RNA-seq technology was used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) during 12 h of 100 mu M Cd stress. Raw reads (n = 80,309,620 were obtained. 108,549 unigenes were identified and classified into 25 COG categories. 8584 DEGs were detected. Many DEGs were involved in defense and detoxification mechanisms including signaling protein kinases, transcription factors, metal transporters and biosynthesis-related enzymes. A Gene Ontology annotation analysis based on the DEGs indicated the presence of many categories including cellular process, cell part and binding, catalytic activity and transporter activity. The Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes pathway analysis identified 107 terms that were enriched for all of the 1018 DEGs. Quantitative real-time PCR of 27 selected DEGs revealed that the expression patterns were consistent with the transcript abundance changes as identified by Solexa analysis.