Genome-wide transcriptome profiling of radish (Raphanus sativus L.) in response to vernalization

Vernalization is a key process for premature bolting. Although many studies on vernalization have been reported, the molecular mechanism of vernalization is still largely unknown in radish. In this study, we sequenced the transcriptomes of radish seedlings at three different time points during vernalization. More than 36 million clean reads were generated for each sample and the portions mapped to the reference genome were all above 67.0%. Our results show that the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between room temperature and the early stage of vernalization (4,845) are the most in all treatments pairs. A series of vernalization related genes, including two FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) genes, were screened according to the annotations. A total of 775 genes were also filtered as the vernalization related candidates based on their expression profiles. Cold stress responsive genes were also analyzed to further confirm the sequencing result. Several key genes in vernalization or cold stress response were validated by quantitative RT-PCR (RT-qPCR). This study identified a number of genes that may be involved in vernalization, which are useful for other functional genomics research in radish.