Transcriptome Profiling of Spike Development Reveals Key Genes and Pathways Associated with Early Heading in Wheat–Psathyrstachys huashanica 7Ns Chromosome Addition Line

Binwen Tan,Yangqiu Xie,Hang Peng,Miaomiao Wang,Wei Zhu,Lili Xu,Yiran Cheng,Yi Wang,Jian Zeng,Xing Fan,Lina Sha,Haiqin Zhang,Peng Qin,Yonghong Zhou,Dandan Wu,Yinghui Land Houyang Kang

Developing early-heading wheat cultivars is an important breeding strategy to utilize light and heat resources, facilitate multiple-cropping systems, and enhance annual grain yield.Psathyrostachys huashanicaKeng (2n= 2x= 14, NsNs) possesses numerous agronomically beneficial traits for wheat improvement, such as early maturity and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. In this study, we found that a cytogenetically stable wheat–P. huashanica7Ns disomic addition line showed (9–11 days) earlier heading and (8–10 days) earlier maturation than its wheat parents. Morphological observations of spike differentiation revealed that the 7Ns disomic addition line developed distinctly faster than its wheat parents from the double ridge stage. To explore the potential molecular mechanisms underlying the early heading, we performed transcriptome analysis at four different developmental stages of the 7Ns disomic addition line and its wheat parents. A total of 10,043 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified during spike development. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs were linked to the carbohydrate metabolic process, photosynthesis, response to abscisic acid, and the ethylene-activated signaling pathway. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs were involved in plant hormone signal transduction (ARF,AUX/IAA,SAUR,DELLA,BRI1, andETR), starch and sucrose metabolism (SUS1andTPP), photosynthetic antenna proteins (Lhc), and circadian rhythm (PRR37,FT,Hd3a,COL, andCDF) pathways. In addition, several DEGs annotated as transcription factors (TFs), such as bHLH, bZIP, MADS-box, MYB, NAC, SBP, WRKY, and NF-Y, may be related to flowering time. Our findings reveal spike development-specific gene expression and critical regulatory pathways associated with early heading in the wheat–P. huashanica7Ns addition line, and provide a new genetic resource for further dissection of the molecular mechanisms underlying the heading date in wheat.