Abstract:
RNA sequencing(RNA-seq) providing genome-wide expression datasets has been successfully used to study gene expression patterns and regulation mechanism among multiple samples. Expression-related genes mined through the construction of interspecific or intraspecific gene co-expression networks(GCNs) are often functionally similar. For potatoes(Solanum tuberosum), there is a large number of public transcriptome sequencing data, but there is a lack of GCN networks built for these high-throughput data, so it is impossible to explore the gene expression patterns and rules under different genotypes, tissues and environmental conditions. We constructed a potato GCN using 16 published RNA-seq datasets covering 11 cultivars from native habitat worldwide. The correlations of gene expression were assessed pair-wisely and biologically meaningful gene modules which were highly connected in GCN were identified. The network was composed of 14 gene modules, which were enriched in many physiological processes, such as plant photosynthetic morphogenesis and dormant release of potato blocks.Among them, 134 genes of one module were specifically highly expressed in the original cultivar(ssp. Andigena),and these genes were found to be related to potato disease and stress resistance through functional enrichment.These results su-ggested that genetic shift of genetic evolutionary stress occurred during potato domestication. In this study, GCN network analysis revealed the clustering of interspecific and intraspecific gene co-expression modules and the evolutionary differentiation of genes among different modules in potato, which provided a new perspective for the study of potato gene function.