Vol. 12, Special Issue 12 (2023)

Author(s):
Divyesh Vasava

Abstract:
Dioecious plant Spine Gourd (Momordica dioica), a commercial and nutritional vegetable crop, serves as a model for studying the mechanisms of sex determination and differentiation in plants. However, this mechanism is still unclear. Herein, based on using next-generation transcriptome sequencing (NGS) and comparative analyses were used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in female and male flower buds. A total of 71.7 million reads were generated. We found a total of 2567, 2059, 3020, 1447 DEGs up-regulated in the female Fe_Fl1_vs_Ml_Fl1; Fe_Fl2_vs_Ml_Fl2; Fe_Fl3_vs_Ml_Fl3; Fe_Fl4_vs_Ml_Fl4 while 4396, 4136, 2408, and 4038 DEGs were respectively down-regulated in female in the same groups. A further 2462, 293, 552 DEGs up-regulated in the female Pre_Fe_vs_Pre_Ml; Dev_Fe_vs_Dev_Ml; while 1864, 246, 826 DEGs were respectively down-regulated in female in the same groups. Moreover, the gene expression pattern of 5 unigenes differentially expressed between male and female flowers revealed by RNA-Seq was confirmed by real-time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR). This comparative transcriptome analysis provides an invaluable resource for gene expression, genomics, and functional genomics studies in M. dioica and its related species. This study also represents a first step toward the investigation of genes involved in spine gourd sex determination.