Abstract
‘Red Meat Honey Crisp (RMHC)’ has been widely cultivated by growers in recent years due to its early maturity, and red meat type characteristics. As a bud variant of ‘Super Red (SR)’ peach, red flesh is the most distinctive characteristic of ‘Red Meat Honey Crisp (RMHC)’. However, the mechanism of red flesh formation in ‘RMHC’ remains unclear. In this study, 79 differentially produced metabolites were identified by metabolomics analysis. The anthocyanin content in ‘RMHC’ was significantly higher than that in ‘SR’ during the same period, such as cyanidin O-syringic acid and cyanidin 3-O-glucoside. Other flavonoids also increased during the formation of red flesh, including flavonols (6-hydroxykaempferol-7-O-glucoside, hyperin), flavanols (protocatechuic acid, (+)-gallocatechin), and flavonoids (chrysoeriol 5-O-hexoside, tricetin). In addition, transcriptomic analysis and RT-qPCR showed that the expression levels of the flavonoid synthesis pathway transcription factor MYB75 and some structural genes, such as PpDFR, PpCHS, PpC4H, and PpLDOX increased significantly in ‘RMHC’. Subcellular localization analysis revealed that MYB75 was localized to the nucleus. Yeast single hybridization assays showed that MYB75 bound to the cis-acting element CCGTTG of the PpDFR promoter region. The MYB75-PpDFR regulatory network was identified to be a key pathway in the reddening of ‘RMHC’ flesh. Moreover, this is the first study to describe the cause for red meat reddening in ‘RMHC’ compared to ‘SR’ peaches using transcriptomics, metabolomics and molecular methods. Our study identified a key transcription factor involved in the regulation of the flavonoid synthetic pathway and contributes to peach breeding-related efforts as well as the identification of genes involved in color formation in other species.
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Data Availability
Data are available on request to the corresponding author. The transcriptome sequencing has been deposited under BioProjectin NCBI. The accession number for these SRA data is PRJNA1038688.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Bioeditas Technology Corporation (Shaanxi, China) for helping with the transcriptome sequencing analysis and Metware Company for helping with the metabolome analysis.
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This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32302508), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2021QC203), the Qilu University of Technology talent research project(2023RCKY222), the Basic Research Project of Science, the Education and Industry Integration Pilot Project (2022PY064), Key Innovation Project (2022JBZ01-06) of Qilu University of Technology (Shandong Academy of Sciences), and Development Plan of Youth Innovation Team in Colleges and Universities of Shandong Province 2022KJ127.
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methodology, XZ; validation, ZL, MC, and YY; formal analysis, ZL, SW, and MS; resources, XX; data curation, CX; writing—original draft preparation, CX; writing—review and editing, XZ; supervision, XZ; project administration, LQ; funding acquisition, WH. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Xu, C., Xue, X., Li, Z. et al. The PpMYB75-PpDFR module reveals the difference between ‘SR’ and its bud variant ‘RMHC’ in peach red flesh. J Plant Res 137, 241–254 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-023-01512-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-023-01512-1