Transcriptome analysis reveals association of carotenoid metabolism pathway with fruit color in melon

Abstract

Flesh color is an important quality of melon (Cucumis melo L.) and is determined mainly by carotenoid content, awarding them with colors, aromas, and nutrients. enhancing the nutritional and health benefits of fruits and vegetables for humans. In this study, we performed transcriptomic analysis of two melon inbred line “B-14” (orange-flesh) and “B-6” (white-flesh) at three developmental stages. We observed that the β-carotene content of inbred line “B-6” (14.232 μg/g) was significantly lower than that of inbred line “B-14” (0.534 μg/g). RNA-sequencing and quantitative reverse transcription PCR analyses were performed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the two inbred lines at different stages; the DEGs were analyzed using the Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes databases (KEGG). We identified 33 structural DEGs in different developmental periods of the two lines that were related to carotenoid metabolism. Among them, PSY, Z-ISO, ZDS, CRTISO, CCD4, VDE1, and NCED2 were highly correlated with carotenoid content. Thus, this study provides a basis for molecular mechanism of carotenoid biosynthesis and flesh color in melon fruit.

Transcriptomic and metabolic analysis unveils the mechanism behind leaf color development in Disanthus cercidifolius var. longipes

“…First, GGPP is converted to 15-cis-phytoene by PSY, which is subsequently transformed into lycopene through the actions of PDS, ZDS, and CRTISO. From lycopene, the pathway then diverges into two branches: in one, lycopene is sequentially catalyzed by LCYE and LCYB to form α-carotene, which is ultimately converted to lutein by BCH and ECH, and in the other, lycopene undergoes dual catalysis by LCYB to produce β-carotene, which is then sequentially transformed into antheraxanthin, violaxanthin, and neoxanthin under the action of ZEP and NXS ( Diao et al, 2023 ). Additionally, VDE reversibly regulates these three xanthophylls.…”

Editorial: Transcriptomics of fruit growth, development and ripening

“…In some cases, transcriptional studies have been focused on just early or late stages of fruit development and ripening (Ando et al, 2012;Goḿez et al, 2014;Liu et al, 2017), or on a specific tissue (Parra et al, 2013;Tafolla-Arellano et al, 2017;Luo et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2021;Zhou et al, 2022), or even on cell transcriptomics (Martin et al, 2016;Shinozaki et al, 2018). Moreover, transcriptomics of hormones-related gene expression (Zhu et al, 2011;Huang et al, 2014;Van de Poel et al, 2014;Tang et al, 2015;Briegas et al, 2020;Kou et al, 2021;Qiao et al, 2021;Camarero et al, 2023), or the effects of environmental/ stress factors on fruit gene expression (Li et al, 2019;Cramer et al, 2020;Waite et al, 2023), biosynthesis/metabolism genes expressed during fruit development (Yu et al, 2021;Zhang et al, 2021;Diao et al, 2023), transcriptomic changes due to the evolution/domestication processes (Martıńez et al, 2021;Borredáet al, 2022;Gramzou et al, 2022), expression of transcription factors genes and gene networks (Ye et al, 2015;Villa-Rivera et al, 2022), transcriptomics of fruit quality (Yang H, et al, 2021;Lei et al, 2022), fruit shape (Tsaballa et al, 2011;Shi et al, 2023) and size-related genes (Huang et al, 2023;Liu et al, 2023), or postharvest transcriptomic changes (Wang et al, 2018;Romero et al, 2022), have been do...…”