Effects of editing DFR genes on flowers, leaves, and roots of tobacco

作者：Jiarui Jiang, Haitao Huang, Qian Gao, Yong Li, Haiying Xiang, Wanli Zeng, Li Xu, Xin Liu, Jing Li, Qi-Li Mi, Lele Deng, Wenwu Yang, Jian-Duo Zhang, Guangyu Yang, Xuemei Li · 发表于：BMC Plant Biology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1186/s12870-023-04307-7 · 被引用次数：21 · 研究领域：Plant Gene Expression Analysis、Insect-Plant Interactions and Control、Plant Molecular Biology Research

BACKGROUND: DFR is a crucial structural gene in plant flavonoid and polyphenol metabolism, and DFR knockout (DFR-KO) plants may have increased biomass accumulation. It is uncertain whether DFR-KO has comparable effects in tobacco and what the molecular mechanism is. We employed the CRISPR/Cas9 method to generate a knockout homozygous construct and collected samples from various developmental phases for transcriptome and metabolome detection and analysis. RESULTS: DFR-KO turned tobacco blossoms white on homozygous tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants with both NtDFR1 and NtDFR2 knockout. RNA-seq investigation of anthesis leaf (LF), anthesis flower (FF), mature leaf (LM), and mature root (RM) variations in wild-type (CK) and DFR-KO lines revealed 2898, 276, 311, and 101 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), respectively. DFR-KO primarily affected leaves during anthesis. According to KEGG and GSEA studies, DFR-KO lines upregulated photosynthetic pathway carbon fixation and downregulated photosystem I and II genes. DFR-KO may diminish tobacco anthesis leaf photosynthetic light reaction but boost dark reaction carbon fixation. DFR-KO lowered the expression of pathway-related genes in LF, such as oxidative phosphorylation and proteasome, while boosting those in the plant-pathogen interaction and MAPK signaling pathways, indicating that it may increase biological stress resistance. DFR-KO greatly boosted the expression of other structural genes involved in phenylpropanoid production ...