Transcriptome Profile Analysis of Winter Rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) in Response to Freezing Stress, Reveal Potentially Connected Events to Freezing Stress

Winter rapeseed is not only an important oilseed crop, but also a winter cover crop in Northern China, where its production was severely limited by freezing stress. As an overwinter crop, the production is severely limited by freezing stress. Therefore, understanding the physiological and molecular mechanism of winter rapeseed (Brassica napus L.) in freezing stress responses becomes essential for the improvement and development of freezing-tolerant varieties of Brassica napus. In this study, morphological, physiological, ultrastructure and transcriptome changes in the Brassica napus line “2016TS(G)10” (freezing-tolerance line) that was exposed to –2 °C for 0 h, 1 h, 3 h and 24 h were characterized. The results showed that freezing stress caused seedling dehydration, and chloroplast dilation and degradation. The content of malondialdehyde (MDA), proline, soluble protein and soluble sugars were increased, as well as the relative electrolyte leakage (REL) which was significantly increased at frozen 24 h. Subsequently, RNA-seq analysis revealed a total of 98,672 UniGenes that were annotated in Brassica napus and 3905 UniGenes were identified as differentially expressed genes after being exposed to freezing stress. Among these genes, 2312 (59.21%) were up-regulated and 1593 (40.79%) were down-regulated. Most of these DEGs were significantly annotated in the carbohydrates and energy metabolism, signal transduction, amino acid metabolism and translation. Most of the up-regulated DEGs were especially enriched in plant hormone signal transduction, starch and sucrose metabolism pathways. Transcription factor enrichment analysis showed that the AP2/ERF, WRKY and MYB families were also significantly changed. Furthermore, 20 DEGs were selected to validate the transcriptome profiles via quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). In conclusion, the results provide an overall view of the dynamic changes in physiology and insights into the molecular regulation mechanisms of winter Brassica napus in response to freezing treatment, expanding our understanding on the complex molecular mechanism in plant response to freezing stress.