The traditional Chinese desert shrub Lycium ruthenicum is widely distributed in arid environments such as north-west China, exhibiting ideal salt tolerance to cope with soil desertification, salinity, and alkalinity. However, the salt-tolerance mechanism of L. ruthenicum, especially of its young seedlings at early vegetative stages, remains largely unknown. In the present study, we collected whole-seedling samples from Lycium ruthenicum at a-pair-leaf stage with and without a mild salt (75 mM sodium chloride) treatment, and then performed transcriptome profiling to compare their gene expressio...