Project description:Marigold (Tagetes erecta L.) is an important ornamental plant with a wide variety of colors. Despite its economic value, there are few biochemical and molecular basic studies of flower color in marigold. To study the mechanism behind its color formation, metabolomics analysis and de novo cDNA sequencing was performed on marigold inbred line ‘V-01’ and its petal color mutant ‘V-01M’, in four flower developmental stages.
Project description:Flower-lotus with many attractive floral characteristics has been studied and discussed the most. These characteristics are used as the standards of the classification in most cases, and always attracted the attention of lotus breeders on improvement program because of associating with ornamental and economic values of lotus. However, molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of these attractive floral features still remain largely unknown. Transcriptome sequencing technique has been established as an efficient approach for gene discovery and expression pattern identification. For some plants, a lot of important genes involved in plant critical metabolisms have been successfully identified by this technique. In the study, mass sequence data obtained from the deep sequencing of a mixed flower-bud cDNA pool from three individuals of N. nucifera provide a platform to comprehensively understand the processes of flower formation and development at the molecular level, and will greatly facilitate the genetic improvement of ornamental characteristics and the directive molecular breeding for lotus in the future. A mixed cDNA pool from young flower-buds (35-40mm in length) of three accessions of N. nucifera were used for deep sequencing using 454 GS-FLX Titanium.
Project description:Flower-lotus with many attractive floral characteristics has been studied and discussed the most. These characteristics are used as the standards of the classification in most cases, and always attracted the attention of lotus breeders on improvement program because of associating with ornamental and economic values of lotus. However, molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of these attractive floral features still remain largely unknown. Transcriptome sequencing technique has been established as an efficient approach for gene discovery and expression pattern identification. For some plants, a lot of important genes involved in plant critical metabolisms have been successfully identified by this technique. In the study, mass sequence data obtained from the deep sequencing of a mixed flower-bud cDNA pool from three individuals of N. nucifera provide a platform to comprehensively understand the processes of flower formation and development at the molecular level, and will greatly facilitate the genetic improvement of ornamental characteristics and the directive molecular breeding for lotus in the future.
Project description:Genome-wide DNA sequence resources are expected to enhance our understanding of the molecular basis of plant development and lead to improvements in desirable traits in horticultural crops. In this study, we sequenced 643,366 ESTs from Eustoma grandiflorum flowers using a normalised cDNA library constructed for several different flower development stages, times of day, and pollinated stamens. The sequences were assembled into 63,401 contigs and 242,212 singletons. BlastX searches for all of the contigs in the GenBank database matched 65% of the contigs to registered sequences, while 35% presented no hits. GO mapping assigned 48% of the 63,401 contigs to GO terms. Microarray analysis showed that subsets of genes were up- or downregulated as the flower developed. The downregulated genes were enriched for GO terms related to 1) oligopeptide transport, 2) response to jasmonic acid stimulus, and 3) cell wall modification, whereas the upregulated genes were enriched for GO terms involved in 1) secondary metabolism, such as the flavonoid biosynthetic process and the terpenoid biosynthetic process, and 2) epidermal cell modification.
Project description:Canna indica L. is an ornamental plant with petaloid staminodes and only a half fertile stamen in its flowers. The genetic basis for petaloid androecium remains unclear. In order to get comprehensive transcriptome data for further studies, RNA-Seq analysis were carried out. Two libraries from flower primordia and differentiated flowers of Canna indica were constructed and sequenced respectively, and totally 118,869 unigenes were assembled. The unigenes were aligned to the protein databases NR, NT, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, COG and GO (e-value<0.00001), and totally 67,299 unigenes were annotated. Our data constitute a preliminary basis for further studies on flower development of Canna indica. The two samples from flower primordium and differentiated flower were sequenced for transcriptome assembly, and gene expression information of the two stages was also obtained from these data.
Project description:The pink-flowered strawberry is very popular in China due to its appreciation and economic benefits and its flower has rich red petal with varying degrees, which is provided by anthocyanins accumulation. To better understand the functions of miRNAs, sRNAome, transcriptome and degradome sequencing were used to explore the target genes of miRNAs in flower development and coloring of pink-flowered strawberry. Nine small RNA libraries and a mixed degradome library from flower petals at different developmental stages were constructed and sequenced in this study. A total of 739 known miRNAs and 964 newly identified miRNAs were identified via small RNA sequencing, and their 2816 target genes were cleaved by 639 miRNAs based on the degradome data. There were 317 different expression miRNAs among flower development in pink-flowered strawberry regulated 2134 different expression target genes, which significantly enriched in the transcriptional regulation, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis and plant hormone signal transduction. Furthermore, integrated microRNAomic and transcriptomic analyses suggested that 98 miRNAs were targeted several transcription factors related to anthocyanin accumulation, in which 26 were targeted to MYBs, 12 bHLHs, 14 NACs, and 19 SPLs. And that, twenty seven different expression miRNAs may affect anthocyanin biosynthesis by regulating 23 targets participated in hormone signal transduction pathway in pink-flowered strawberry. The qRT-PCR analysis confirmed the expression changes of 21 miRNA-target pairs showed an opposite trend. Moreover, a co-expression regulatory network was constructed based on differentially expressed miRNA-targets according to the degradome data. Overall, we conducted a comparative analysis uncovered the regulatory functions of microRNAs in flower development and color changes of pink-flowered strawberry via multiple factors, including anthocyanin biosynthesis, hormone signaling and regulation factors. This work not only expands the knowledge of miRNAs affecting the coloration in strawberry, but also provides rich resources for future functional studies.
Project description:Genome-wide DNA sequence resources are expected to enhance our understanding of the molecular basis of plant development and lead to improvements in desirable traits in horticultural crops. In this study, we sequenced 643,366 ESTs from Eustoma grandiflorum flowers using a normalised cDNA library constructed for several different flower development stages, times of day, and pollinated stamens. The sequences were assembled into 63,401 contigs and 242,212 singletons. BlastX searches for all of the contigs in the GenBank database matched 65% of the contigs to registered sequences, while 35% presented no hits. GO mapping assigned 48% of the 63,401 contigs to GO terms. Microarray analysis showed that subsets of genes were up- or downregulated as the flower developed. The downregulated genes were enriched for GO terms related to 1) oligopeptide transport, 2) response to jasmonic acid stimulus, and 3) cell wall modification, whereas the upregulated genes were enriched for GO terms involved in 1) secondary metabolism, such as the flavonoid biosynthetic process and the terpenoid biosynthetic process, and 2) epidermal cell modification. Two-condition experiment, loop-design among 4 developmental stages. Biological replicates: 4.
Project description:Canna indica L. is an ornamental plant with petaloid staminodes and only a half fertile stamen in its flowers. The genetic basis for petaloid androecium remains unclear. In order to get comprehensive transcriptome data for further studies, RNA-Seq analysis were carried out. Two libraries from flower primordia and differentiated flowers of Canna indica were constructed and sequenced respectively, and totally 118,869 unigenes were assembled. The unigenes were aligned to the protein databases NR, NT, Swiss-Prot, KEGG, COG and GO (e-value<0.00001), and totally 67,299 unigenes were annotated. Our data constitute a preliminary basis for further studies on flower development of Canna indica.
Project description:Flower opening is important for successful pollination in many plant species, and some species repeat reversible flower opening and closing movements. This is thought to be due to the turgor pressure change caused by the water influx/efflux, which depends on osmotic oscillation in the cells. In some ornamental plants, it has been suggested that water channel aquaporin may play an important role in flower opening. However, the molecular mechanism(s) involved in flower movement are largely unknown. Using Gentiana flowers, which show reversible movement in response to temperature and light stimuli, as a model, we showed that reversible flower opening is regulated by aquaporin GsPIP2;2 and GsPIP2;7. In particular, phosphorylation of the C-terminal serine residue of GsPIP2;2 is important for the transport activity and correlates closely with the flower re-opening rate. Furthermore, GsPIP2;2 is phosphorylated and activated by GsCPK16, which is activated by elevated cytosolic Ca2+ levels in response to temperature and light stimuli. We propose that reversible flower opening is regulated by GsCPK16-dependent GsPIP2;2 phosphorylation and activation, with stimulus-induced calcium signals acting as triggers. CPK-dependent phosphorylation and activation of PIP2s may be one of the universal regulatory mechanisms for flower opening in plants.
Project description:Petal is not only the target of selection by horticulturalists to enhance the ornamental value of plants but also emerged as a unique model system for plant organogenesis studies. It is known that three major groups of pigments, betalains, carotenoids and anthocyanins, are responsible for the attractive natural display of flower colors. While carotenoids and betalains generally yield yellow or red colors, anthocyanins confer a diverse range of color from orange to red to violet and blue. In this study, we collected 11 species (Erysimum cheiri, Malcolmia maritime, Brassica oleracea, Raphanus sativus, Orychophragmus violaceus, Eruca sativa, Orychophragmus violaceus, Iberis amara, Aubrieta x cultorum, Lobularia maritime, Matthiola incana) belong to different tribe in Brassicaceae family with varied flower color and performed petal transcriptome analysis. de novo transcriptome assembly showed that average length of the contigs varied from 631bp in O. violaceus to 1212bp in Matthiola incana which indicated that the complexity of the genomes are different much. Protein homology between these species and those sequenced species in Brassicaceae family are consistent with the known phylogenetic relationships. However, O. violaceus has closer relationships with Sisymbrium irio than expected Brassica species. Clustering analysis of genes in anthocyanin and carotenoids synthesis pathway indicated that while silence or low expression of CCD4 (Carotenoid Cleavage Dioxygenase 4) leading to the yellow color formation in different species, purple or red color variation might result from different genes expression variation. These results not only provide transcriptome data for petal development study but also provide useful information for Brassica flower improvement for ornamental purpose.