Responsive Transcriptome Analysis of Senecio vulgaris L. Under Different Drought Stresses

Drought is one of the most important abiotic stresses that seriously affects plant growth and crop yield. Senecio vulgaris is a weed with strong drought tolerance, however, the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance hasn’t been reported so far. In this study, RNA-Seq used to investigate the different expression genes in drought stress with different treatments (0 h, 6 h and 24 h by PEG-6000). A total of 7500 DEGs were involved, of which 981 showed differential expression between 0, 6 and 24 h treatments. Most DEGs related to osmotic adjustment substances, inducible proteins, transcription factors and plant hormone signal transduction showed differential expression in the early stage of drought stress. The changes in the expression activity of many vital proteins in the ABA signalling pathway indicate that they might also have an important contribution to the improvement of the drought tolerance of S. vulgaris. GO and KEGG analyses showed that more than half of DEGs were related to biological processes. The number of DEGs related to cellular components decreased with increasing drought stress. The pathways significantly enriched included plant hormone signal transduction, starch and sucrose metabolism, ribosome and protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum. Our study analyzed the molecular responses to drought stress in S. vulgaris, which provides new insight for better understanding of the molecular basis of drought stress responses, aiming to improve plant drought tolerance for yield and quality enhancement.