Metabolomic and Transcriptomic Analysis of Lycium chinese and L. ruthenicum Under Salinity Stress

Abstract

Background: High soil salinity often adversely affects plant physiology and agricultural productivity of almost all crops worldwide, including the crude drug known as wolfberry. However, the mechanistic basis of this action in wolfberry is not fully understood yet.Results: Here in this study, we studied potentials different mechanisms in Chinese wolfberry (Lycium chinese, LC) and black wolfberry (L. ruthenicum, LR) under salinity stress, by analyzing their transcriptome and metabolome. The hormone detection analysis revealed that the ABA content was significantly lower in LR than LC under normal conditions, but increased sharply under salinity stress in LR but not in LC. The transcriptome analysis showed that the enriched salinity-responsive genes in wolfberry were mainly related to MAPK signaling, amino sugar and nucleotide sugar metabolism, carbon metabolism, and plant hormone signal transduction pathways in LC, while mainly related to carbon metabolism and protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum in LR. Metabolome results indicated that LR harbored higher flavone and flavonoid content than LC under normal conditions. However, when exposed to salinity stress, flavone and flavonoid content hardly changed in LR, whereas flavonoid and flavone biosynthesis was activated to resist to salinity stress in LC.Conclusions: Our results adds ABA and flavone metabolism to mechanistic understanding of salinity tolerance in wolfberry. In addition, flavone play a positive role in resistance to salinity stress in wolfberry.