Fig 1.
Effects of uniconazole on inflorescence development and flowering in litchi.
(A) Inflorescence state before uniconazole application (30 days after floral evocation); (B) Inflorescence states from untreated control (B1) and uniconazole-treated (B2) plants four weeks after treatment (full-bloom stage of untreated control); (C) Clusters from untreated control (C1) and uniconazole-treated (C2) plants six weeks after treatment (fruitlet stage after abscission); (D) D1 and D2 represent the magnification of the portions of C1 and C2, respectively; (E) Effects of uniconazole on the blossoming process of male flower and female flower.
Table 1.
Effects of uniconazole treatment on flowering and fruiting in litchi.
Fig 2.
Volcano plots showing the comparison of DEGs between the treatment and control groups.
The red scatters indicate upregulated DEGs, green scatters indicate downregulated DEGs, and black scatters indicate no DEGs between the uniconazole-treated and untreated samples. Datasets were filtered to remove genes with low expression levels (dotted line from −1 to 1 on the x-axis), and a significance cut off (p< 0.01) was applied (dotted line on the y-axis).
Fig 3.
Functional analysis of DEGs based on the KEGG pathway.
Pathways with a Q-value ≤ 0.05 significantly enriched in DEGs were analyzed in the comparison between treatment and control at the flowering stages. The degrees of KEGG enrichment can be measured by the richness factor, Q-value, and gene number enriched in this pathway. The right y-axis represents the KEGG pathway, and the x-axis shows the richness factor, which denotes the ratio of the number of DEGs to the number of annotated genes enriched in this pathway.
Fig 4.
Heat map diagrams of relative expression levels of DEGs in the hormone signal transduction pathways.
DEGs in the signal transduction pathways identified in KEGG pathway enrichment analysis are shown as auxin (A), ethylene (B), abscisic acid brassinosteroid (C), brassinosteroid (D), salicylic acid (E), and jasmonic acid (F). Ratios are expressed as log2 RPKM (treatment/control) values. Red and green colors indicate gene upregulation and downregulation, respectively.
Table 2.
Expression analysis of genes related to flowering in inflorescence buds of litchi after uniconazole treatment.
Fig 5.
Differentially expressed genes encoding transcription factors following uniconazole treatment.
Different shades of red and green express the extent of change according to the color bar provided in Fig 4. Red and green indicate upregulation and downregulation of genes, respectively, whereas white indicates that no change was detected after uniconazole treatment.
Fig 6.
Verification of RNA-seq results by RT-qPCR.
Transcript levels of 15 genes, including 5 probable transcription factors, 5 flowering-related genes, and 5 genes involved in hormone signaling, as measured by RT-qPCR analyses. The relative RT-qPCR expression is shown on the y-axis to the left, with error bars representing the standard error (n = 3).