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Candidate reference genes for quantitative gene expression analysis in Lagerstroemia indica

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Abstract

Quantitative gene expression analysis by qPCR requires reference genes for normalization. Lagerstroemia indica (crape myrtle) is a popular ornamental plant in the world, but suitable endogenous reference genes are lacking. To find suitable reference genes, we evaluated the stabilities of nine candidate genes in six experimental data sets: six different tissues, three leaf colors, nine flower colors, and under three abiotic stresses (salt, drought, cold) using four statistical algorithms. A target gene LiMYB56 (homolog of Arabidopsis MYB56) was used to verify the authenticity and accuracy of the candidate reference genes. The results showed that the combination of two stably expressed reference genes, rather than a single reference gene, improved the accuracy of the qPCR. LiEF1α-2 + LiEF1α-3 was best for the tissue, salt treatment, and drought treatment sets; LiEF1α-2 + LiEF1α-1 was optimal for leaf color; LiEF1α-2 + LiACT7 was optimal for cold treatment; and LiUBC + LiEF1α-1 was best for the flower color set. Notably, LiEF1α-2 had high expression stability in all six experimental sets, implying it may be a good reference gene for expression studies in L. indica. Our results will facilitate future gene expression studies in L. indica.

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Acknowledgements

We thanked Margaret Biswas, PhD, from Liwen Bianji, Edanz Editing China (www.liwenbianji.cn/ac), for editing the English text of a draft of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.31770745), Key R&D Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. BE2017375) and Forestry Science And Technology Innovation And Promotion Program of Jiangsu Province (LYKJ[2019]40).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiangsu Key Laboratory for the Research and Utilization of Plant Resources, Institute of Botany, Jiangsu Province & Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210014, China

    Manli Chen, Qing Wang, Ya Li, Lulu Gao, Fenni Lv, Rutong Yang & Peng Wang

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  1. Manli Chen
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  7. Peng Wang
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Contributions

PW and RY conceived and designed the study; MC performed the experiment and wrote the paper; QW and YL reviewed and edited the manuscript; LG collected the material; FL helped perform the data analyses with constructive discussions. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Rutong Yang or Peng Wang.

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Chen, M., Wang, Q., Li, Y. et al. Candidate reference genes for quantitative gene expression analysis in Lagerstroemia indica. Mol Biol Rep 48, 1677–1685 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-021-06209-z

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