Abstract
Herbaceous peony (Paeonia lactiflora Pall.) is one of the color-leaved ornamental spring plants, with graceful appearance and splendid color. However, the underlying mechanism of this coloration variation from purple to green has not been studied in P. lactiflora. In th study, the leaves in purple, purple–green, and green stages were compared in terms of anatomical, physiological, and molecular. We found that the variation of leaf color from purple to green was mainly determined by the change in pigments distributed in the leaf surface. Physiological experiments showed a significant increase in chlorophyll contents and a notable reduction in anthocyanin contents in leaves from the purple to green stages. We further found that the anthocyanin biosynthesis-related dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR) gene and anthocyanin synthase (ANS) gene as well as chlorophyll biosynthesis-related glutamyl-tRNA reductase (HEMA) gene showed a decreased trend in leaves from purple to green stages, whereas the chlorophyll degradation-related chlorophyll b reductase (NYC) gene showed a rising trend. Alteration of DFR and ANS gene expression might reduce anthocyanin accumulation, whereas increased HEMA gene expression would enhance chlorophyll biosynthesis and reduced NYC gene expression would inhibit chlorophyll degradation. Consequently, reduction in anthocyanins and enhanced deposition of chlorophylls resulted in leaf coloration variation from purple to green in P. lactiflora, which could improve our understanding of its mechanism for further studies.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (31400592), the National Key Research and Development Program (2018YFD1000405), the Graduate Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (XKYCX19_119), the Program of Key Members of Yangzhou University Outstanding Young Teacher and the Priority Academic Program Development from Jiangsu Government.
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JT and DZ planned and designed the experiments. YT, ZF and ML performed the experiments. YT analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript. All authors carefully read and approved the final manuscript.
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Tang, Y., Fang, Z., Liu, M. et al. Color characteristics, pigment accumulation and biosynthetic analyses of leaf color variation in herbaceous peony (Paeonia lactiflora Pall.). 3 Biotech 10, 76 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-2063-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-2063-3