Dynamic changes in the transcriptome of Populus hopeiensis in response to abscisic acid

Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a fundamental role in plant response and adaptation to abiotic stresses, such as drought, high salinity and low temperature. Populus hopeiensis exhibits exceptional tolerance to water-deficit environments and is therefore an excellent choice for studying drought tolerance in trees. This study provides a global view of transcriptome dynamics in P. hopeiensis in response to exogenous ABA using Illumina RNA-sequencing. Endogenous ABA content increased and reached a peak at 8 h after ABA treatment and then significantly decreased at latter time points. Differential expression analysis and Gene ontology enrichment revealed that the number of transcripts exhibited significant increase during the first 8 hours after ABA treatment, which then significantly decreased at 12 and 24 h. Transcription factors (TFs) analysis showed that six different patterns were observed based on the expression of the six TFs families (AP2/ERF, NAC, MYB, MYB-related, bZIP and WRKY) and the majority of differentially expressed TFs increased rapidly after ABA treatment. This study provides a robust resource for investigating the functions of genes induced by ABA and will help to develop a better understanding of the molecular regulatory mechanism in response to drought in poplar.