Abstract:

To reveal the physiological characteristics and gene transcriptome changes of Panax notoginseng under drought stress, we studied the effects of drought on P. notoginseng through drought conditions and normal watering (control). The chlorophyll content, soluble protein content, POD activity, SOD activity, CAT activity and MDA activity of P. notoginseng leaves were measured respectively, and RNA was extracted from P. notoginseng leaves for transcriptome sequencing analysis. The results show that the change of MDA in P. notoginseng is very obvious under drought stress. Compared with the control, the MDA activity of the plant increases by 88.41% after drought, on the contrary, the effect of CAT activity affected by drought is not obvious. The results of transcriptome analysis show that there are 431 up-regulated genes and 151 down-regulated genes in the drought treated samples compared with the control. GO annotation and functional enrichment analysis were carried out on the differential genes. There are 160 up-regulated genes and 53 down-regulated genes with 213 differential gene annotations in the database. KEGG analysis shows that there are 122 DEGs in 37 metabolic pathways. 9-cis-cyclocarotenoid-dioxygenase, the key enzyme of ABA anabolism, is significantly enriched, indicating that P. notoginseng may regulate drought response through the increase of ABA related synthase.

Key words: Panax notoginseng, drought, physiological characteristic analysis, transcriptome analysis, ABA