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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1571944
Comprehensive transcriptomic and metabolomic analysis revealed drought tolerance regulatory pathways in upland cotton
Provisionally accepted
Fenglei Sun 1 Junhao Wang 2
Shiwei Geng 1
Yajun Liang 1
Zhaolong Gong 1
Yang Ni 1 Shuaishuai Qian 1 Nala Zhang 3 Xueyuan Li 1 Junduo Wang 1*
Juyun Zheng 1*- 1 Cash Crop Research Institute, Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Urumqi, China
- 2 Engineering Research Centre of Cotton, Ministry of Education/College of Agriculture, Xinjiang Agricultural University, Urumqi, China
- 3 National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Hubei Hong shan Laboratory, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
Cotton is a kind of cash crop widely planted in arid and semi-arid areas. In this study, we performed multi-omics analysis of two drought resistant extreme materials, Yumian 4 and C460, under drought stress. Transcriptome analysis showed that DY (post-drought stress Yumian 4) had more differentially expressed genes than DC (post-drought stress C460), and there were 10247 DEGs in the two comparison groups. Metabolomics analysis identified 1766 metabolites, which were divided into 12 classes. The up-regulated metabolites mainly included lipid accumulation, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and flavonoids. The combined transcriptome and metabolome analysis highlighted the importance of phenylpropanoid biosynthesis in enhancing drought tolerance. Combining the two omics analysis, it was found that the enrichment pathway of differential genes and differential metabolites is mainly in the phenylpropane biosynthesis pathway, which contains 23 related candidate genes. In summary, the results of multi-omics analysis of the two extreme drought resistance cotton materials showed that they enhanced drought resistance by affecting phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathways. Promote the accumulation of osmotic substances. The results further deepen our understanding of the molecular mechanism of drought tolerance in cotton and provide new insights for molecular breeding of cotton.
Keywords: Cotton, Drought stress, Transcriptomics, Metabolomics, Multi-omics analysis
Received: 06 Feb 2025; Accepted: 10 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sun, Wang, Geng, Liang, Gong, Ni, Qian, Zhang, Li, Wang and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Junduo Wang, Cash Crop Research Institute, Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Urumqi, China
Juyun Zheng, Cash Crop Research Institute, Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Urumqi, China
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