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Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Candidate Genes Involved in Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Flowers of the Pagoda Tree (Sophora japonica L.)

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Abstract

The flowers of pagoda tree (Sophora japonica L.) are white, which limited its ornamental value and caused few researches on its flower color and anthocyanin accumulation. A pink flower mutant (PM) was discovered, which provided an opportunity to investigate anthocyanin biosynthesis in pagoda tree flowers. In this study, the anthocyanin and flavone/flavonol contents in petals of PM and wild type (WT; white flower) were measured. The content of total anthocyanins was significantly higher in the PM than in the WT at four floral stages (S1–S4). There were no significant differences of total flavonol content between these two varieties at each floral stage, indicating that the flavone/flavonol content did not influence flower color, while anthocyanin was a key factor to determine pink flower coloration. Then, transcriptome analysis was performed by using the petals of PM and WT at S1–S4. Differentially expressed genes encoding chalcone synthase, flavanone 3-hydroxylase, flavonol synthase, flavanone 3′-hydroxylase, dihydroflavonol-4-reductase, anthocyanidin synthase, and UDP-glucose: flavonoid-3-O-glucosyltransferase were identified. Importantly, we found that SjDFR2 might be the key gene in anthocyanin accumulation in petals. Transcription factors, SjPAP1, SjMYB111, SjMYB1b, SjMYBL2, SjTT8, and WD40 protein SjTTG1, might play critical roles in regulation of anthocyanin accumulation in petals. Moreover, regulatory factors involved in the phytohormone signal pathway (SjIAA19, SjIAA27, SjAXR3, SjARF20, and SjERS1), and light signal pathway (SjHY5), were also screened out. These results will provide some new insights into the control of flower color in pagoda tree, as well as some candidate genes to breed novel flower colors using molecular methods.

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Data Availability

The raw sequence data reported in this paper have been deposited in the Genome Sequence Archive in the BIG Data center, Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG), Chinese Academy of Sciences, under accession number CRA002363.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by The Youth Research Foundation of Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences of China (QNJJ201923) and The Science and Technology Innovation Ability Construction Projects of Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences of China (KJCX20200207, KJCX20200114).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Academy of Forestry and Pomology Sciences, Beijing, 100093, People’s Republic of China

    Liping Guo, Qinghua Pan & Ting Liao

  2. School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, People’s Republic of China

    Liping Guo & Xiaonan Yu

  3. P. O. Box 7, Miki–cho Post Office, Ikenobe 3011–2, Kagawa–ken, 761–0799, Japan

    Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva

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  1. Liping Guo
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  2. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva
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  3. Qinghua Pan
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  5. Xiaonan Yu
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Contributions

QP, XY, TL, and LG conceived and designed the experiments; LG performed the experiments and wrote the paper; XY and LG analyzed the data; JATS provided critical assessment of the data and results; QP and JATS revised all versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Qinghua Pan or Xiaonan Yu.

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344_2020_10222_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Figure S1 Mass spectrograms of (a) anthocyanin in PM petals, (b) flavone in PM petals, (c) anthocyanin in WT petals, and (d) flavone in WT petals of the pagoda tree. PM, pink mutant; WT, wild type. Supplementary file1 (TIF 20928 kb)

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Guo, L., Teixeira da Silva, J.A., Pan, Q. et al. Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Candidate Genes Involved in Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Flowers of the Pagoda Tree (Sophora japonica L.). J Plant Growth Regul 41, 1–14 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-020-10222-0

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