Lipids signaling and unsaturation of fatty acids participate in ramie response to submergence stress and hypoxia-responsive gene regulation.

ABSTRACT

Ramie is a valuable crop that produces high-quality fibers and holds promise in ecological management and potential therapeutic properties. The damage of submergence during the fertile period seriously affects the growth of ramie. This study used transcriptomics and UPLC-QTOF/MS-based lipidomics analysis to reveal the lipids remodeling and stress adaptation mechanism in ramie response to submergence. The results of subcellular distribution showed that lipids in ramie leaf cells mostly aggregate in the inter-chloroplast cytoplasm to form lipid droplets under submergence stress. High-performance thin-layer chromatography (HPTLC) and lipidomics analysis showed that the composition and content of lipids in ramie leaves significantly changed under submergence stress, and the content of fatty acids (FAs) gradually accumulated with the extension of the submergence treatment time. Further analysis revealed that the content of 183 (n3) Coenzyme A (C183-CoA) increased significantly with the prolongation of submergence stress, and the exogenous addition of C183-CoA activated the expression of hypoxia-responsive marker genes such as BnADH1, BnPCO2, BnADH1, and BnPDC1. These results suggest that the ramie lipid metabolism pathways were significantly affected under submergence, and the C183-CoA may act directly or indirectly on the hypoxia-responsive genes to activate their transcriptional activities, thereby enhancing the tolerance of ramie to submergence stress.