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Comparative transcriptome analysis to reveal key ethylene genes involved in a Lonicera macranthoides mutant

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Abstract

Background

Lonicera macranthoides Hand.-Mazz. is an important medicinal plant. Xianglei-type (XL) L. macranthoides was formed after many years of cultivation by researchers on the basis of the natural mutant. The corolla of L. macranthoides XL remains unexpanded and its flowering period is nearly three times longer than that of wild-type (WT) plants. However, the molecular mechanism behind this desirable trait remains a mystery.

Objective

To understand the floral phenotype differences between L. macranthoides and L. macranthoides XL at the molecular level.

Methods

Transcriptome analysis was performed on L. macranthoides XL and WT. One DEG was cloned by RT-PCR amplification and selected for qRT-PCR analysis.

Results

Transcriptome analysis showed that there were 5603 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in XL vs. WT. Enrichment analysis of DEGs showed that pathways related to plant hormone signal transduction were significantly enriched. We identified 23 key genes in ethylene biosynthesis and signal transduction pathways. The most abundant were the ethylene biosynthesis DEGs. In addition, the open reading frames (ORFs) of WT and XL ETR2 were successfully cloned and named LM-ETR2 (GenBank: MW334978) and LM-XL-ETR2 (GenBank: MW334978), respectively. qRT-PCR at different flowering stages suggesting that ETR2 acts in the whole stage of flower development of WT and XL.

Conclusions

This study provides new insight into the molecular mechanism that regulates the development of special traits in the flowers of L. macranthoides XL. The plant hormone ethylene plays an important role in flower development and flowering duration prolongation in L. macranthoides. The ethylene synthesis gene could be more responsible for the flower phenotype of XL. The genes identified here can be used for breeding and improvement of other flowering plants after functional verification.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available in the NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (SRA). Raw sequence data are available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA821943 (Released on 1 April 2022), with Bioproject accession number of PRJNA821943, Biosample accession number of SAMN27160582-587 and SRA accession number of SRR18577093-098.

Abbreviations

XL:

Xianglei-type L. macranthoides

WT:

Wild-type L. macranthoides

DEGs:

Differentially expressed genes

GO:

Gene Ontology

KEGG:

Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes

TPM:

Transcripts per million

SSR:

Simple sequence repeat

BP:

Biological process

CC:

Cellular component

MF:

Molecular function

ERFs:

Ethylene-responsive transcription factors

SAMSs:

S-Adenosylmethionine synthases

ACS:

1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate synthase

ACOs:

1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate oxidases

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Funding

This work was supported by ‘the Hunan Postgraduate Scientific Research Innovation Project’ (grant numbers: CX20220793), ‘the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation’(grant numbers: 81203007 and 81673546), ‘the Natural Science Foundation of China Hunan Province’ (grant number: 2021JJ3049 and 2021JJ3051), ‘China Agriculture Research System of MOF and MARA’, ‘First-class specialty construction point of Hunan province in 2020: TCM resources and Development’, ‘the Program of modern agricultural industrial technology system in Hunan (grant number: [2019]105)’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Pharmacy, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha, 410208, China

    YuQing Long, Juan Zeng, Min Yang, XinRu Zhou, Mei Zeng, QiaoZhen Tong, RiBao Zhou & XiangDan Liu

  2. Key Laboratory of Germplasm Resources and Standardized Planting of Hunan Large-Scale Genuine Medicinal Materials, Changsha, 410208, China

    YuQing Long, Juan Zeng, Min Yang, XinRu Zhou, Mei Zeng, QiaoZhen Tong, RiBao Zhou & XiangDan Liu

  3. Hunan Chemical Vocational Technology College, Zhuzhou, 412000, China

    ChangYu Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Modern Research of TCM, Education Department of Hunan Province, Changsha, 410208, China

    QiaoZhen Tong, RiBao Zhou & XiangDan Liu

Authors
  1. YuQing Long
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  2. Juan Zeng
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  3. Min Yang
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  4. XinRu Zhou
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  5. Mei Zeng
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  7. QiaoZhen Tong
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  8. RiBao Zhou
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Contributions

YL: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Investigation, Formal Analysis, Writing—Original Draft; JZ: Data Curation, Writing—Original Draft; MY: Visualization, Investigation; XZ: Resources, Supervision; MZ: Software, Validation; CL: Visualization, Writing—Review & Editing; QT: Writing—Review & Editing; RZ (Corresponding Author): Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Resources, Data Curation, Writing—Review & Editing; XL (Corresponding Author): Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Resources, Supervision, Writing—Review & Editing.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to RiBao Zhou or XiangDan Liu.

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The authors declare they have no financial interests.

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Experimental research and field studies on plants including the collection of plant material are comply with relevant guidelines and regulation. We have permission to collect L. macranthoides.

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Long, Y., Zeng, J., Yang, M. et al. Comparative transcriptome analysis to reveal key ethylene genes involved in a Lonicera macranthoides mutant. Genes Genom 45, 437–450 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13258-022-01354-6

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