ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Development and EvoDevo
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1605238
Integrated transcriptomics and metabolomics analysis of flower petals colour transition in different phenotype of Lonicera macranthoides
Provisionally accepted
- Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
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Background: Lonicera macranthoides is a classic Chinese medicinal herb with direct flower color variation among types. Our group found differences in petal colour transition between Xianglei-type (XL) and Wild-type (WT). At f1-f4 stage, the two types were green, and gradually changed from green to greenish white with development, in f5-f6, WT from white to golden yellow, but XL has little color change. Methods: Combined with transcriptomics and metabolomics analysis, the color conversion differences between XL and WT petals of Lonicera macranthoides were analyzed. Results: Significant differential genes were identified at f1-f4, f5 and f6 in WT and XL, 14528, 7955 and 17985, respectively. At f1, the WT anthocyanin gene showed lower than XL (P < 0.05), significantly down-regulated XL and upregulated WT at f2 (P < 0.05), but still showed higher XL than WT. XL showed significantly lower CHS (DN46824_c0_g4), CHI (DN43583_c0_g1), ANS (DN28844_c0_g1) than WT in f3. f4 stage, but again XL anthocyanins were higher than WT. We found that XL carotenoid genes all showed significantly higher levels than WT in f1 (P < 0.05). XL were significantly down-regulated at f2-f3 (P < 0.05), but not WT. Surprisingly, WT had a rapid rise in PDS (DN55130_c2_g1), ZDS (DN54194_c0_g1), and BCH (DN42921_c1_g2) at f4, far exceeding XL (P < 0.05). PSY, PDS, and ZDS genes on the carotenoid synthesis pathway, and CHS and CHI genes on the anthocyanin synthesis pathway were identified to have lower XL than WT at f5. The anthocyanin synthesis pathway CHS, CHI, and ANS were more expressed in XL than WT at f6, whereas the carotenoid synthesis pathway BCH, LCYB, and NXS were more expressed in WT than in XL. Expression validation of these genes was performed using quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Metabolomic analysis identified a total of 158 flavonoids and one carotenoid. There were few pigment-related metabolites of f1-f4, WT had higher β-carotene content in f5 than XL, Pelargonin, marasin-3-O-galactoside had the most content in XL, and cyanidin had the most content in WT of f6. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) showed that two gene modules and one gene module were strongly associated with
Keywords: Lonicera macranthoides, Wild-types, Xianglei-types, Petal colour, pigment
Received: 03 Apr 2025; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Qu, Zeng, He, Zhang, Zhou, Tong, Liu and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Xiangdan Liu, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
Ribao Zhou, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, China
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