De novo transcriptome analysis reveals tissue-specific differences in gene expression in Salix arbutifolia

Key message Transcriptome of five tissues revealed tissue - specific differences in gene expression in Salix arbutifolia, which provides valuable information and sequence resources for identifying the DEGs in willow. Abstract Salix arbutifolia Pallas is an ancient tree that occupies the basal position in the Salicaceae phylogeny. It is a riparian dioecious tree species distributed in northeastern Asia. Currently, there are no transcriptomic data available that can be used to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in different tissues of S. arbutifolia . Here, the RNA-seq analysis results of transcriptome data are reported using Illumina deep sequencing of five tissues from S. arbutifolia . De novo gene assembly was used to generate the consensus transcriptome, and over 25,529,018 high-quality reads were obtained for each library, with 75.97 GB clean data with a Q30 greater than 87.93 %. Here, 60,012 unigenes with an average length of 918 bp were obtained. Comparison of transcriptomes combined with quantitative real-time PCR from the Salix libraries showed that DEGs are mainly functional in photosynthesis, phenylalanine metabolism, glycolysis, and gluconeogenesis. The current global gene expression profiling exercise gives a comprehensive view of the transcriptome and provides valuable information and sequence resources for identifying the DEGs in S. arbutifolia . Moreover, the transcriptome data provide a basis for future study of genetic resistance in Salix .