Abstract
Key message
The weighted gene co-expression network analysis and antisense oligonucleotide-mediated transient gene silencing revealed that CsAAP6 plays an important role in amino acid transport during tea shoot development.
Abstract
Nitrogen transport from source to sink is crucial for tea shoot growth and quality formation. Amino acid represents the major transport form of reduced nitrogen in the phloem between source and sink, but the molecular mechanism of amino acid transport from source leaves to new shoots is not yet clear. Therefore, the composition of metabolites in phloem exudates collected by the EDTA-facilitated method was analyzed through widely targeted metabolomics. A total of 326 metabolites were identified in the phloem exudates with the richest variety of amino acids and their derivatives (93), accounting for approximately 39.13% of the total metabolites. Moreover, through targeted metabolomics, it was found that the content of glutamine, glutamic acid, and theanine was the most abundant, and gradually increased with the development of new shoots. Meanwhile, transcriptome analysis suggested that the expression of amino acid transport genes changed significantly. The WGCNA analysis identified that the expression levels of CsAVT1, CsLHTL8, and CsAAP6 genes located in the MEterquoise module were positively correlated with the content of amino acids such as glutamine, glutamic acid, and theanine in phloem exudates. Reducing the CsAAP6 in mature leaves resulted in a significant decrease in the content of glutamic acid, aspartic acid, alanine, leucine, asparagine, glutamine, and arginine in the phloem exudates, indicating that CsAAP6 played an important role in the source to sink transport of amino acids in the phloem. The research results will provide the theoretical basis and genetic resources for the improvement of nitrogen use efficiency and tea quality.
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The datasets generated during and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Funding
This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (32002087), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2020QC171), the Agricultural Variety Improvement Project of Shandong Province (2020LZGC010), the Livelihood Project of Qingdao City (22-3-7-xdny-5-nsh) and the School Fund Project of Qingdao Agricultural University (1120096).
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KF and ZD conceived and designed the experiment. JZ, KS, and KF performed most of the experiments and drafted the paper. YW provided the tea seedlings used in the experiment. WQ, LS, and JS reviewed and modified the language of the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Zhang, J., Sun, K., Wang, Y. et al. Integrated metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses reveal the molecular mechanism of amino acid transport between source and sink during tea shoot development. Plant Cell Rep 43, 28 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-023-03110-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-023-03110-w