Integrative Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analyses of the Mechanism of Anthocyanin Accumulation and Fruit Coloring in Three Blueberry Varieties of Different Colors

作者：Liwei Chu, Qianhui Du, Aizhen Li, Guiting Liu, Hexin Wang, Qingqing Cui, Zhichao Liu, Haixia Liu, Yani Lu, Yanqiong Deng, Guohui Xu · 发表于：Horticulturae · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.3390/horticulturae10010105 · 被引用次数：11 · 研究领域：Plant Gene Expression Analysis、Phytochemicals and Antioxidant Activities、Plant biochemistry and biosynthesis

Blueberries are recognized worldwide as one of the most important healthy foods due to their anthocyanins, which have special antioxidant properties. They have become a highly produced and valuable fruit crop. Most blueberry varieties are rich in anthocyanins, which impart a beautiful blue color; however, there are currently several blueberry varieties with different colors worldwide, and these special-colored varieties are the key to analyzing the coloring mechanism of blueberry fruit. Fruit color could be seen as an important nutritional quality trait in terms of marketing. In this study, a combination of transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses was performed on three representative blueberry varieties (‘Pink Popcorn’, ‘Chandler’, and ‘Black Pearl’) with pink, blue, and black fruits, respectively. The metabolomic results showed that the delphinium pigment is the dominant anthocyanin, which is the prerequisite for the formation of fruit color in blueberries. We identified 18 candidate structural genes in the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway that were significantly up-regulated during three stages of fruit ripening in ‘Black Pearl’ and ‘Chandler’, but these were not found to be significantly expressed in ‘Pink Popcorn’ after combining the transcriptomic analysis results. The non-expression of the VcANS gene may lead to the pink color of the mature fruit of ‘Pink Popcorn’. The phylogenetic tree, heatmap analysis, and WGCNA analysis identified a candidate transcription factor, V...