Quantitative Changes in the Transcription of Phytohormone-Related Genes: Some Transcription Factors Are Major Causes of the Wheat Mutant dmc Not Tillering

Abstract

Tiller number is an important agronomic trait for grain yield of wheat (<i>Triticum aestivum</i> L.). A dwarf-monoculm wheat mutant (<i>dmc</i>) was obtained from cultivar Guomai 301 (wild type, WT). Here, we explored the molecular basis for the restrained tiller development of the mutant <i>dmc</i>. Two bulked samples of the mutant <i>dmc</i> (T1, T2 and T3) and WT (T4, T5 and T6) with three biological replicates were comparatively analyzed at the transcriptional level by bulked RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq). In total, 68.8 Gb data and 463 million reads were generated, 80% of which were mapped to the wheat reference genome of Chinese Spring. A total of 4904 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between the mutant <i>dmc</i> and WT. DEGs and their related major biological functions were characterized based on GO (Gene Ontology) and KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) categories. These results were confirmed by quantitatively analyzing the expression profiles of twelve selected DEGs via real-time qRT-PCR. The down-regulated gene expressions related to phytohormone syntheses of auxin, zeatin, cytokinin and some transcription factor (TF) families of TALE, and WOX might be the major causes of the mutant <i>dmc,</i> not tillering. Our work provides a foundation for subsequent tiller development research in the future.