Affiliation:
1. National Watermelon and Melon Improvement Center, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Improvement of Horticultural Crops (North China), National Engineering Research Center for Vegetables, Beijing Key Laboratory of Vegetable Germplasm Improvement, Beijing 100097, China
2. College of Forestry, Basic Forestry and Proteomics Research Center, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou 350002, China
Abstract
Fruit ripening is a highly complicated process that is accompanied by the formation of fruit quality. In recent years, a series of studies have demonstrated post-transcriptional control play important roles in fruit ripening and fruit quality formation. Till now, the post-transcriptional mechanisms for watermelon fruit ripening have not been comprehensively studied. In this study, we conducted PacBio single-molecule long-read sequencing to identify genome-wide alternative splicing (AS), alternative polyadenylation (APA) and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in watermelon fruit. In total, 6,921,295 error-corrected and mapped full-length non-chimeric (FLNC) reads were obtained. Notably, more than 42,285 distinct splicing isoforms were derived from 5,891,183 intron-containing full-length FLNC reads, including a large number of AS events associated with fruit ripening. In addition, we characterized 21,506 polyadenylation sites from 11,611 genes, 8703 of which have APA sites. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis showed that fructose and mannose metabolism, starch and sucrose metabolism and carotenoid biosynthesis were both enriched in genes undergoing AS and APA. These results suggest that post-transcriptional regulation might potentially have a key role in regulation of fruit ripening in watermelon. Taken together, our comprehensive PacBio long-read sequencing results offer a valuable resource for watermelon research, and provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the complex regulatory networks of watermelon fruit ripening.
Funder
Natural Science Foundation of China
Young Beijing Scholar Program
Foundation of Beijing Academy of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences
Construction of Cucurbits Collaboration and Innovation Center
Innovation and Development Program of Beijing Vegetable Research Center
Subject
Inorganic Chemistry,Organic Chemistry,Physical and Theoretical Chemistry,Computer Science Applications,Spectroscopy,Molecular Biology,General Medicine,Catalysis