Comparative Transcriptome Analysis Between Cytoplasmic Male Sterile Line NJCMS1A and Its Maintainer NJCMS1B in Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr)

The comparative transcriptome analysis between the cytoplasmic male sterile line NJCMS1A and its near-isogenic maintainer NJCMS1B in soybean was conducted using the Illumina sequencing technology. A total of 88,643 transcripts were produced in the Illumina sequencing. Then 56,044 genes were obtained matching the soybean reference genome. 365 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between NJCMS1A and NJCMS1B were screened by threshold, among which, 339 down-regulated and 36 up-regulated in NJCMS1A compared to NJCMS1B. GO annotation showed that 242 DEGs were annotated to 19 functional categories. COG annotation showed that 265 DEGs were classified into 19 categories. KEGG enrichment pathway analysis showed that 46 DEGs were assigned to 33 metabolic pathways. According to the functional and metabolic pathway analysis combined with previously reported literatures, the relations between some key DEGs and the male sterility of NJCMS1A were discussed. qRT-PCR analysis showed that there was 90.48% conformity between the qRT-PCR and RNA-Seq gene expression pattern results, indicating that the expression pattern of the RNA-Seq sequencing data was reliable. We concluded that the male sterility of NJCMS1A might be related to the disturbed functions and metabolism pathways of some key DEGs, such as DEGs involved in carbohydrate and energy metabolism, encoding transcription factors, regulation of pollen development, elimination of ROS, cellular signal transduction, and PCD etc. Future research will focus on the cloning and transgenic function validation of possible candidate genes associated with soybean CMS.