拟南芥花粉单细胞转录组分析

Single-cell transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis pollen

为了深入探究花粉基因表达的规律,应用单细胞技术对拟南芥花粉细胞进行了单细胞转录组测序.花粉单细胞RNA-seq结果表明,与叶片转录组相比,成熟花粉中大部分基因表达较低,可能与花粉转录沉默有关.花粉中富集果胶代谢、细胞骨架和钙信号转导等通路,与细胞壁形成和花粉管生长相关.花粉还富集组蛋白甲基化因子,说明花粉中存在表观遗传学调控.应用RT-PCR鉴定出6个花粉特异性表达且功能未知的基因,其中大多数为十字花科特有.总之,本研究精确定量了花粉细胞的基因表达谱,揭示出拟南芥花粉转录组的复杂性和独特性.

To reveal the regulation of pollen gene expressions,the single-cell technology was used to sequence the transcriptome of Arabidopsis pollen cells.The results of pollen single-cell RNA-seq indicated that most of the genes expressed in mature pollen were lower than those in leaf transcriptome,which might be related to transcriptional silencing in pollen.Pollen is rich in pectin metabolism,cytoskeleton and calcium signal transduction pathways,which are related to cell wall formation and pollen tube growth.Pollen is also rich in histone methylation factors,suggesting that epigenetics mechanisms have regulatory roles in pollen.Six pollen-specific genes with unknown functions were identified by RT-PCR,most of which are Brassicaceae-specific.In summary,the gene expression profiling of pollen cells performed in this study revealed the complexity of Arabidopsis pollen transcriptome.