RNA-seq and analysis
The CSL-gel and SL-gel were embedded into soil planted with N. benthamiana and 10 mL of water was given to the soil every 24 h. Water-treated plants severed as the negative control. After 7 days, the leaves at the same position of the plant were picked and sent to Kedio Biotechnology Co., Ltd. for transcriptome sequencing (NCBI Bioproject Number: PRJNA823004). RSEM software (v 1.3.1) was used to map the clean reads of each sample to the N. benthamiana reference genome (solgenomics Niben.genome.v1.0.1), and FPKM conversion was performed to analyze the expression level of each Unigene. NOIseq software (v 1.20.0) was used to analyze the DEGs of different hydrogel-treated samples and control samples, and the default recognition criteria for DEGs were |log2(fold change)|≥2 and FDR≤0.05.