Transcriptomic Analysis of Cadmium Stress Response in the Heavy Metal Hyperaccumulator Sedum alfredii Hance

The Sedum alfredii Hance hyperaccumulating ecotype (HE) has the ability to hyperaccumulate cadmium (Cd), as well as zinc (Zn) and lead (Pb) in above-ground tissues. Although many physiological studies have been conducted with these plants, the molecular mechanisms underlying their hyper-tolerance to heavy metals are largely unknown. Here we report on the generation of 9.4 gigabases of adaptor-trimmed raw sequences and the assembly of 57,162 transcript contigs in S. alfredii Hance (HE) shoots by the combination of Roche 454 and Illumina/Solexa deep sequencing technologies. We also have functionally annotated the transcriptome and analyzed the transcriptome changes upon Cd hyperaccumulation in S. alfredii Hance (HE) shoots. There are 110 contigs and 123 contigs that were up-regulated (Fold Change >= 2.0) and down-regulated (Fold Change <= 0.5) by chronic Cd treatment in S. alfredii Hance (HE) at q-value cutoff of 0.005, respectively. Quantitative RT-PCR was employed to compare gene expression patterns between S. alfredii Hance (HE) and non-hyperaccumulating ecotype (NHE). Our results demonstrated that several genes involved in cell wall modification, metal translocation and remobilization were more induced or constitutively expressed at higher levels in HE shoots than that in NHE shoots in response to Cd exposure. Together, our study provides large-scale expressed sequence information and genome-wide transcriptome profiling of Cd responses in S. alfredii Hance (HE) shoots.