Integrative omics of Lonicera japonica Thunb. Flower development unravels molecular changes regulating secondary metabolites

Abstract

A B S T R A C TLonicera japonica Thunb. is an important medicinal plant. The secondary metabolites in L. japonica are diverse and vary in levels during development, leading to the ambiguous evaluation for its medical value. In order to reveal the regulatory mechanism of secondary metabolites during the flowering stages, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic analyses were performed. The integration analysis of omic-data illustrated that the metabolic changes over the flower developmental stages were mainly involved in sugar metabolism, lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, carbon conversion, and secondary metabolism. Further proteomic analysis revealed that uniquely identified proteins were mainly involved in glycolysis/phenylpropanoids and tricarboxylic acid cycle/ terpenoid backbone pathways in early and late stages, respectively. Transketolase was commonly identified in the 5 developmental stages and 2-fold increase in gold flowering stage compared with juvenile bud stage. Simple phenylpropanoids/flavonoids and 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate were accumulated in early stages and upregulated in late stages, respectively. These results indicate that phenylpropanoids were accumulated attributing to the activated glycolysis process in the early stages, while the terpenoids biosynthetic pathways might be promoted by the transketolase-contained regulatory circuit in the late stages of L. japonica flower development. Biological Significance: Lonicera japonica Thunb. is a native species in the East Asian and used in traditional Chinese medicine. In order to reveal the regulatory mechanism of secondary metabolites during the flowering stages, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic analyses were performed. The integration analysis of omicdata illustrated that the metabolic changes over the flower developmental stages were mainly involved in sugar metabolism, lipopolysaccharide biosynthesis, carbon conversion, and secondary metabolism. Our results indicate that phenylpropanoids were accumulated attributing to the activated glycolysis process in the early stages, while the terpenoids biosynthetic pathways might be promoted by the transketolase-contained regulatory circuit in the late stages of L. japonica flower development.

Metabolomic analysis reveals dynamic changes in secondary metabolites of Sophora japonica L. during flower maturation

“…Metabolomics, which is characterized by rapid, convenient, and high-throughput data generation, can be used to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze metabolites in whole organisms or cells ( Feng et al, 2020 ) and to determine related metabolic processes ( Mohammat et al, 2017 ; Long et al, 2021 ). With new analytical technologies and comprehensive compound mass spectrometry databases, metabolomics has become an important tool for studying plant physiology, especially in the study of plant stress resistance ( Zhao et al, 2021 ), flower and fruit development ( Yang et al, 2019 ; Yu et al, 2019 ), and food quality dynamics ( Xiao et al, 2021 ).…”

The honeysuckle genome provides insight into the molecular mechanism of carotenoid metabolism underlying dynamic flower coloration

“…In addition, L. japonica is an important antiviral used to treat the SARS coronavirus (Wu et al, 2004;Liu et al, 2006;Shang et al, 2011;He et al, 2013), influenza A viruses (Zhou et al, 2015), the H1N1 flu virus (Ko et al, 2006), and Enterovirus 71 (Li et al, 2018a). It has further value as a component of healthy food and beverages (Zhang et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2019).…”

LjaFGD: Lonicera japonica functional genomics database

“…In China, floral buds of L. japonica are the main component of traditional Chinese medicine. Previous studies have also shown that floral buds contain higher levels of medicinal components, including flavonoids and luteoloside, than flowers (Shang et al, 2011;Yujie et al, 2015;Zhu et al, 2017;Qi et al, 2019;Yang et al, 2019). Therefore, the accumulation of medicinal components was consistent with the expression level of FLS1 and its co-expressed genes.…”