Transcriptome Sequencing Provides Insights into High-Temperature-Induced Leaf Senescence in Herbaceous Peony

Global warming causes frequent high temperatures in summer; which negatively impacts herbaceous peonies (Paeonia lactiflora Pall.) by accelerating leaf senescence and reducing biomass accumulation, leading to reduced flower quality in the subsequent year. Our findings revealed that as heat stress progressed, the high-temperature-sensitive cultivar ‘Meigui Zi’ (MGZ) exhibited a higher rate of chlorophyll content reduction and more pronounced premature aging symptoms than the high-temperature-tolerant cultivar ‘Chi Fen’ (CF). To investigate gene expression differences between CF and MGZ under high-temperature stress, we combined PacBio Iso-Seq sequencing (Iso-Seq) with next-generation sequencing (RNA-seq). Iso-seq yielded 352,891 full-length transcripts ranging from 61 bp to 49,022 bp in length. RNA-seq generated 257,562 transcripts across all samples. Further analysis revealed that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between CF and MGZ were primarily enriched in “Photosynthesis”, with most photosynthesis-related DEGs highly expressed in CF. This indicates that CF has higher stability in its photosystem compared with MGZ, which is crucial for mitigating leaf senescence caused by high temperatures. Additionally, the highly expressed chlorophyll degradation genes stay-green (SGR) and stay-green-like (SGRL) in MGZ may be involved in chlorophyll content reduction induced by high temperature. This study preliminarily revealed the molecular mechanism of high-temperature-induced leaf senescence of in herbaceous peony and provided candidate genes for further studies of the regulation mechanism of high -temperature-induced leaf senescence.