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Transcriptome analysis reveals the accumulation mechanism of anthocyanins in ‘Zijuan’ tea (Camellia sinensis var. asssamica (Masters) kitamura) leaves

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Abstract

Anthocyanin biosynthesis in herbaceous plants has been studied widely, but the mechanism of anthocyanin accumulation in ‘Zijuan’ tea remains unclear. In this study, the leaf transcriptome of ‘Zijuan’ tea was analyzed at the purple and green stages by using the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. A total of 2250 unigenes were differentially expressed at the purple and green stages. Anthocyanin biosynthesis and carbohydrate metabolism were enriched through the KEGG metabolic pathway analysis of the differentially expressed unigenes. The upregulated sucrose synthase gene in the purple leaves may provide hexoses and UDP-glucose for anthocyanin synthesis. The genes encoding the corresponding enzymes in the glycolysis pathway were upregulated, whereas the expression of those genes encoding the enzymes in the TCA cycle showed no obvious change. Increased acetyl-CoA may contribute to anthocyanin accumulation through the upregulated cytosolic acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase (ACCase) gene in the purple leaves of ‘Zijuan’ tea, indicating that glycolysis may provide more intermediates as substrates for promoting anthocyanin accumulation. The physiological and qRT-PCR results were consistent with the RNA-Seq data. Our findings expand our knowledge on the metabolic regulation of anthocyanin synthesis in tea plants.

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Acknowledgments

This work was financially supported by the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (Award No. 20123515110014) and Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (Award No. 2014J01079).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. School of Life Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

      Jian Li, Xiaojie Lv, Xiaomin Song & Wei Chen

    2. School of Life Sciences, Ningxia University, Yinchuan, 750000, People’s Republic of China

      Lingxia Wang

    3. Anxi College of Tea Sciences, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry Universty, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

      Jinke Lin

    4. Forestry College, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, 350002, People’s Republic of China

      Zhimin Qiu

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    1. Jian Li
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    W. Chen is the first corresponding author.

    J. Li and X. Lv have contributed equally to this work.

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    10725_2016_183_MOESM1_ESM.tif

    Supplementary Fig. S1 Length distribution of contig and unigene sequence in the ‘Zijuan’ tea transcriptome. Length distribution of contigs(A); length distribution of unignes(B) (TIF 403 KB)

    Supplementary Table S1 Primers used for qRT-PCR in ‘Zijuan’ tea (XLSX 12 KB)

    Supplementary Table S2 All DEGs of purple and green leaves in ‘Zijuan’ tea (XLS 1394 KB)

    10725_2016_183_MOESM4_ESM.xlsx

    Supplementary Table S3 Significantly enriched KEGG pathways for the differentially expressed unigenes in the ‘Zijuan’ tea transcriptome (XLSX 11 KB)

    10725_2016_183_MOESM5_ESM.xlsx

    Supplementary Table S4 Differentially expressed unigenes participated in anthocyanin biosynthesis and transportation and carbohydrate metabolism and some unigenes involved in TCA cycle between purple and green leaves in ‘Zijuan’ tea (XLSX 30 KB)

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    Li, J., Lv, X., Wang, L. et al. Transcriptome analysis reveals the accumulation mechanism of anthocyanins in ‘Zijuan’ tea (Camellia sinensis var. asssamica (Masters) kitamura) leaves. Plant Growth Regul 81, 51–61 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-016-0183-x

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