The chrysanthemum leaf and root transcript profiling in response to salinity stress

RNA-Seq was applied to capture the transcriptome of the leaf and root of non-treated and salinity-treated chrysanthemum cv. 'Jinba' plants. A total of 206,868 unigenes of mean length 849 nt and of N50 length 1363 nt was identified; of these about 64% (> 132,000) could be functionally assigned. Depending on the severity of the salinity stress, differential transcription was observed for genes encoding proteins involved in osmotic adjustment, in ion transport, in reactive oxygen species scavenging and in the regulation of abscisic acid (ABA) signaling. The root stress response was dominated by the up-regulation of genes involved in ion transport, while that of the leaf reflected the plant's effort to make osmotic adjustments and to regulate Ca2+ transport. An array of known transcription factors (WRKY, AP2/ERF, MYB, bHLH and NAC) were differentially transcribed.