De Novo Transcriptome Analysis for Kentucky Bluegrass Dwarf Mutants Induced by Space Mutation

Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) is a major cool-season turfgrass requiring frequent mowing. Utilization of cultivars with slow growth is a promising method to decrease mowing frequency. In this study, two dwarf mutant selections of Kentucky bluegrass (A12 and A16) induced by space mutation were analyzed for the differentially expressed genes compared with the wild type (WT) by the high-throughput RNA-Seq technology. 253,909 unigenes were obtained by de novo assembly. 24.20% of the unigenes had a significant level of amino acid sequence identity to Brachypodium distachyon proteins, followed by Hordeum vulgare with 18.72% among the non-redundant (NR) Blastx top hits. Assembled unigenes were associated with 32 pathways using KEGG orthology terms and their respective KEGG maps. Between WT and A16 libraries, 4,203 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, whereas there were 883 DEGs between WT and A12 libraries. Further investigation revealed that the DEG pathways were mainly involved in terpenoid biosynthesis and plant hormone metabolism, which might account for the differences of plant height and leaf blade color between dwarf mutant and WT plants. Our study presents the first comprehensive transcriptomic data and gene function analysis of Poa pratensis L., providing a valuable resource for future studies in plant dwarfing breeding and comparative genome analysis for Pooideae plants.