Exploration of the Effects of Different Blue LED Light Intensities on Flavonoid and Lipid Metabolism in Tea Plants via Transcriptomics and Metabolomics.

Pengjie Wang,Xiaomin Chen,Naixing Ye,Sirong Chen,Jiangfan Yang,Feng Zhao,Mengya Gu,Xuejin Chen

doi:10.3390/ijms21134606

Abstract

Blue light extensively regulates multiple physiological processes and secondary metabolism of plants. Although blue light quantity (fluence rate) is important for plant life, few studies have focused on the effects of different blue light intensity on plant secondary metabolism regulation, including tea plants. Here, we performed transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses of young tea shoots (one bud and two leaves) under three levels of supplemental blue light, including low-intensity blue light (LBL, 50 μmol m–2 s–1), medium-intensity blue light (MBL, 100 μmol m–2 s–1), and high-intensity blue light (HBL, 200 μmol m–2 s–1). The total number of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in LBL, MBL and HBL was 1, 7 and 1097, respectively, indicating that high-intensity blue light comprehensively affects the transcription of tea plants. These DEGs were primarily annotated to the pathways of photosynthesis, lipid metabolism and flavonoid synthesis. In addition, the most abundant transcription factor (TF) families in DEGs were bHLH and MYB, which have been shown to be widely involved in the regulation of plant flavonoids. The significantly changed metabolites that we detected contained 15 lipids and 6 flavonoid components. Further weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) indicated that CsMYB (TEA001045) may be a hub gene for the regulation of lipid and flavonoid metabolism by blue light. Our results may help to establish a foundation for future research investigating the regulation of woody plants by blue light.

Highlights

Plants are sessile in nature and must respond appropriately to changing environmental factors to flourish; of these factors, light is one of the most important
Our research revealed that high-intensity blue light can lead to the coexpression of genes in photosynthesis and lipid metabolism pathways and further regulate the synthesis of related metabolites
Our study compared the effects of three levels of blue light intensity on the transcripts and metabolites of tea plants and found that high-intensity blue light (HBL) can significantly affect the secondary metabolism of tea plants

Summary

Introduction

Plants are sessile in nature and must respond appropriately to changing environmental factors to flourish; of these factors, light is one of the most important. Some evidence suggests that blue light is involved in the molecular regulation of secondary metabolites. Blue light affects the degradation of fatty acids in plant leaves and changes the fatty acid composition of membrane lipids, and 200 μmol m–2 s–1 blue light can maximize the lipid content of Chlorella [12,13]. These studies indicate that blue light has the potential to regulate plant growth and secondary metabolism

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