The phytohormone brassinosteroid (BR) promotes early seedling development via auxin signaling pathway in rapeseed

Abstract The phytohormone brassinosteroid (BR) regulate various developmental and physiological processes in plants. However, the function of BR during early seedling development stage in rapeseed is largely unknown. To understand the effects of exogenous BR during early seedling development, the ZS11 and BR-INSENSITIVE (bin2) mutants were treated with BR before seed sowing and seed germination stage under 16/8 hours light/dark cycle. The phenotype results indicated that BR promotes only seedling establishment but not seed germination stage in ZS11, while no function in bin2 mutants. Since BRs play a crucial role in regulation of developmental transition between growth in the dark (skotomorphogenesis) and growth in the light (photomorphogenesis), the ZS11 and bin2 mutants were treated with BR under continuous light and dark. The BR treatment also showed the same functions as 16/8 hours light/dark cycle. To understand the function of BR on expression levels, the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and differentially expressed metabolites (DEMs) between mock- and BR-treated seedlings were explored. A total of 234 significantly DEGs were identified between the mock- and BR-treated groups by transcriptomic analyses. These DEGs were markedly enriched in BR biosynthesis, pentose and glucuronate interconversions and plant hormone signal transduction pathways. Meanwhile, a total of 145 DEMs were identified through metabolomics analyses, with a significant enrichment in lipid substances. Interestingly, some genes and metabolites associated with auxin pathway were identified, which exhibited up-regulation in both DEGs and DEMs after BR treatment. Subsequently, functional enrichment analyses revealed that the majority of DEGs and DEMs were primarily enriched in ascorbate and aldehyde metabolism, arginine and proline metabolism, tryptophan metabolism (the main route for auxin synthesis) and cyanogenic amino acid metabolism. Furthermore, it was found that glutamate was up-regulated in nitrogen metabolism, glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism, and arginine and proline metabolism pathways. These indicated that the glutamate signaling pathway was a key regulatory pathway for exogenous BR to induce seedling establishment. These evidence implied that exogenous BR treatment lead to up-regulation of auxin-related genes expression, then promoted seedling establishment in rapeseed.