Fig. 6: Transcriptome analysis of CDK8-regulated salt-responsive genes.

a Volcano plots representing the fold-change of DEGs in the comparison groups of WT-NaCl-0h vs WT-NaCl-3h and WT-NaCl-3h vs cdk8-NaCl-3h. Red and yellow dots represent up-regulated and down-regulated genes, respectively (P < 0.05, absolute fold change ≥ 1). Gray dots represent genes without significant changes. Statistical tests for differentially expressed genes were performed based on negative binomial distribution by DESeq2 software. b Venn diagrams and Heatmap representing DEGs regulated by CDK8. c Gene Ontology (GO) analysis showing the top 15 enrichment categories of CDK8-regulated salt-responsive genes. Results of classification in biological process categories with P values from statistical overrepresentation test are presented (FDR < 0.05). P values are in exponential notation (E + n). d Heat map analysis of salt-responsive transcription factors regulated by CDK8. e Relative expression levels of DREB2A, MYB15 and ANAC040 in WT, cdk8-1, ahl10 and cdk8-1 ahl10 mutant plants with or without NaCl treatment. ACTIN2 was used as a control. The expression of the indicated genes in untreated WT was set at 1. Data represent means ± SD of three technical repeats. Different letters indicate statistically significant differences by two-way ANOVA (Tukey’s multiple comparisons test, P < 0.01).