Evaluation of gene expression responses to colchicine in Dactylis smithii at different tissues

Abstract

Environmental stresses have had a major impact on gene expression and evolutionary adaptation as a whole. What has been discovered is that polyploids have a genetic advantage compared to their diploid relatives in allele selectivity. Naturally occurring polyploids can occur through allopolyploids where two species hybridize their genomes, but more commonly autopolyploidy occurs when either chromosomes within an organism fail to separate during cell division, or when fertilization occurs, gametes do not separate correctly. What has been recently discovered is that diploids can be artificially doubled into polyploids using colchicine. Colchicine is an antimitotic agent that stops microtubules from separating chromosome sets during cell division in an organism. In this study, colchicine was used to treat diploid Dactylis smithii roots from two different accessions (UK and Spain). qPCR was then used to differentiate gene activity between the root and leaf samples and then compared with the RNA sequence transcriptome provided by Zhou et al. (2017). The comparison showed some similarities in up- and down- regulation for all areas, but also provided insight on trends where the expression of a gene changed between 5 and 24 hours after treatment. Future research could look at a comparison between another known autopolyploid and compare the gene activity between the two.