TITLE:
In-Silico Identification and Differential Analysis of Mitochondrial RNA Editing Events in Helianthus Genotypes/Species and Powdery Mildew Infected Variants
AUTHORS:
Duruvasula Sree Lekha, Kandasamy Ulaganathan, Mulpuri Sujatha
KEYWORDS:
Helianthus annuus, RNA Editing, RNA-seq, H. niveus, H. debilis, H. praecox, Biotic Stress, Powdery Mildew
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.14 No.12,
December
29,
2023
ABSTRACT: Sunflower is one of the most used commercial oilseed crops and suffers
due to Powdery mildew. RNA sequence alteration occurs due to RNA editing which
is a post transcriptional modification. It causes a deviation from the genomic
DNA sequence resulting in RNA-DNA differences. Accurate study of RNA editing
events in diverse species is possible by NGS based
methods. Here, we performed RNA sequencing of 12 leaf transcriptomes, which
include three genotypes of Helianthus annuus (2023B, TX16R and ID25), H.
debilis, H. niveus, and H. praecox along with their respective powdery mildew pathogen infected
variants and systematically analysed the mitochondrial RNA editing events using computational reference-based mapping approach. We discovered 687 editing
sites, 220 editing events in the protein-coding regions, among all species and
genotypes considered in this study. These included “C to U” and “U to C” RNA
editing events. On further analysis, we observed that these editing events
include 14 different types of amino acid changes that involve the creation of
two stop codon events. The conserved editing sites
identified were 247 accounting for ~36% of all the editing sites identified.
This study provides a detailed picture of the Helianthus species’ mitochondrial
RNA editing status. We have identified and characterized for the first time,
genotype-specific, species-specific, and stress-specific RNA editing events
which may be useful as a potential source for stress-responsive studies in the future.