LAUSR

Understanding the molecular basis of host-pathogen interactions is imperative for devising disease management strategies. The root (wilt) disease is the foremost debilitating disease threatening coconut production in India. To explore the molecular mechanisms involved in compatible and incompatible interactions, global transcriptome profiling of leaves of healthy and diseased Chowghat Green Dwarf (CGD) palms was conducted. RNA-Seq analysis generated more than 190 million 100 bp reads from both healthy and diseased samples. Assembled transcriptome yielded 59,282 transcripts with a median length of 987 bp. BLASTX annotation of transcriptome resulted in 39,665 transcripts getting annotated from Uniprot and date palm proteome database. Differential gene expression profiling analysis revealed 2718 transcripts to be up- or down- regulated in the diseased palms in comparison to healthy control at a fold change of 2 and above with a p value <=0.05. The differentially expressed transcripts could be categorized into pathways which included cell wall biogenesis, primary and secondary metabolism, plant-pathogen interaction, cellular transport, hormone biosynthesis and signaling. Validation by quantitative real time PCR (RT-qPCR) of a set of arbitrarily selected genes, both up-regulated and down-regulated, established a comparable pattern as observed by RNA-Seq analysis. Overall, the resources generated in this study provide an in-depth analysis and new insights into the interaction of coconut palms with the root (wilt) disease pathogen.