Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2022, Vol. 57 ›› Issue (2): 182-196.DOI: 10.11983/CBB21189

• EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNICATIONS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Sex Specific Response Mechanism of Transcriptome in Both Male and Female Marchantia polymorpha Under Cadmium Stress

Haixia Xu, Jing He, Hang Yi, Li Wang()   

  1. College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China
  • Received:2021-11-08 Accepted:2022-02-25 Online:2022-03-01 Published:2022-03-24
  • Contact: Li Wang

Abstract: Marchantia polymorpha, a dioecious bryophyte, is characterized by hypersensitivity to heavy metal stress. There is a great difference in proportion of female and male in population, which means M. polymorpha is an ideal object to study plant sexual dimorphism under heavy metal stress. We used high-throughput sequencing and weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) to explore the differences in the transcriptomes of M. polymorpha between male and female in response to the cadmium (Cd). We identified modules and genes associated with different sexes under Cd stress. The results showed that transcription factors differentially responsive to Cd stress were mainly the members of bHLH, ERF and MYB family, and some hub genes such as MARPO_0147s0038, MARPO_1326s0001, and MARPO_0015s0058. The differentially responsive pathways were mainly focused on signaling pathways in females and flavonoid biosynthesis pathway in males. These findings will help to reveal the process and mechanism of dioecious M. polymorpha response to Cd stress and provide a reference for understanding the sex-specific response mechanism of dioecious plants to heavy metal stress.

Key words: Marchantia polymorpha, cadmium stress, heavy metal, RNA-seq, weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA)