Identification of C4 photosynthesis metabolism and regulatory-associated genes in Eleocharis vivipara by SSH

This is the first effort to investigate the candidate genes involved in kranz developmental regulation and C4 metabolic fluxes in Eleocharis vivipara, which is a leafless freshwater amphibious plant and possesses a distinct culms anatomy structure and photosynthetic pattern in contrasting environments. A terrestrial specific SSH library was constructed to investigate the genes involved in kranz anatomy developmental regulation and C4 metabolic fluxes. A total of 73 ESTs and 56 unigenes in 384 clones were identified by array hybridization and sequencing. In total, 50 unigenes had homologous genes in the databases of rice and Arabidopsis. The real-time quantitative PCR results showed that most of the genes were accumulated in terrestrial culms and ABA-induced culms. The C4 marker genes were stably accumulated during the culms development process in terrestrial culms. With respect to C3 culms, C4 photosynthesis metabolism consumed much more transporters and translocators related to ion metabolism, organic acids and carbohydrate metabolism, phosphate metabolism, amino acids metabolism, and lipids metabolism. Additionally, ten regulatory genes including five transcription factors, four receptor-like proteins, and one BURP protein were identified. These regulatory genes, which co-accumulated with the culms developmental stages, may play important roles in culms structure developmental regulation, bundle sheath chloroplast maturation, and environmental response. These results shed new light on the C4 metabolic fluxes, environmental response, and anatomy structure developmental regulation in E. vivipara.