Generation and Analysis of Expressed Sequence Tags from Chimonanthus praecox (Wintersweet) Flowers for Discovering Stress-Responsive and Floral Development-Related Genes

A complementary DNA library was constructed from the flowers of Chimonanthus praecox, an ornamental perennial shrub blossoming in winter in China. Eight hundred sixty-seven high-quality expressed sequence tag sequences with an average read length of 673.8 bp were acquired. A nonredundant set of 479 unigenes, including 94 contigs and 385 singletons, was identified after the expressed sequence tags were clustered and assembled. BLAST analysis against the nonredundant protein database and nonredundant nucleotide database revealed that 405 unigenes shared significant homology with known genes. The homologous unigenes were categorized according to Gene Ontology hierarchies (biological, cellular, and molecular). By BLAST analysis and Gene Ontology annotation, 95 unigenes involved in stress and defense and 19 unigenes related to floral development were identified based on existing knowledge. Twelve genes, of which 9 were annotated as “cold response,” were examined by real-time RT-PCR to understand the changes in expression patterns under cold stress and to validate the findings. Fourteen genes, including 11 genes related to floral development, were also detected by real-time RT-PCR to validate the expression patterns in the blooming process and in different tissues. This study provides a useful basis for the genomic analysis of C. praecox.