A de novo floral transcriptome reveals clues into Phalaenopsis orchid flower development

Abstract

Phalaenopsis has a zygomorphic floral structure, including three outer tepals, two lateral inner tepals and a highly modified inner median tepal called labellum or lip; however, the regulation of its organ development remains unelucidated. We generated RNA-seq reads with the Illumina platform for floral organs of the Phalaenopsis wild-type and peloric mutant with a lip-like petal. A total of 43,552 contigs were obtained after de novo assembly. We used differentially expressed gene profiling to compare the transcriptional changes in floral organs for both the wild-type and peloric mutant. Pair-wise comparison of sepals, petals and labellum between peloric mutant and its wild-type revealed 1,8..