ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1672924
This article is part of the Research TopicPlant Natural Products: Biosynthesis, Regulation, and Function, Volume IIView all articles
Metabolomics combined with transcriptomics reveals the formation mechanism of different leaf colors of Heuchera micrantha
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jiangsu Open University, Nanjing, China
- 2Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China
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The vivid colors of color-leafed plants endow plants with unique ornamental value. At present, there are many researches focusing on the mechanism of flower color formation, while there is less interesting research on color-leafed. As an excellent color-leafed plant, Heuchera micrantha has only been studied for its pigment content and physiological characteristics, and the mechanism of color-leafed formation has not been characterized yet. In this study, we used two varieties of Heuchera micrantha with green and red leaves as materials, and employed a combination of metabolomics and transcriptomics to reveal the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of different color leaves. Through observation of phenotype, analysis of metabolomics and transcriptome, and combined analysis of multi-omics, it was found that differential metabolites and differentially expressed genes were enriched in flavonoid metabolism and related pathways. Nine MYB and bHLH transcription-factor candidates implicated in flavonoid metabolism were selected and functionally annotated; five are predicted to act as activators and four as repressors of the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway. In summary, this study provides important insights into the coloring mechanism of color-leafed plants and provides gene reserves for subsequent targeted breeding.
Keywords: Heuchera micrantha, color-leafed plants, Metabolomics, Transcriptomics, Flavonoid metabolism
Received: 25 Jul 2025; Accepted: 16 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Tang, Chen, Yang, Zhou, Hu, Meng and Peng. 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: Yuxi Wang, wangyx@jsou.edu.cn
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