Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Overexpression of MYB Transcription Factors on the Regulatory Mechanisms of Anthocyanin Biosynthesis.

Weichao Liu,Like Qiu,Qixiang Zhang,Jia Wang,Ping Li,Lulu Li,Yujie Yang,Tangchun Zheng,Tangren Cheng

doi:10.3389/fpls.2021.781343

Abstract

MYBs (v-myb avian myeloblastosis viral oncogene homologs) are important transcriptional regulators that play critical roles in the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis. The overexpression of MYB genes has been reported in different plant species. However, the inconsistent strategies to assess transgenic plants have made it difficult to explain the complex mechanisms of regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis by MYBs. We report here a meta-analysis of 608 studies from 206 publications assessing the effects of MYB overexpression on anthocyanins and evaluate the experimental variables that have an influence on transgenic plant performance. We found that MYB expression enhanced the magnitude of 20 out of 26 examined plant parameters by at least of 21% and reduced the magnitude of 1 indicator by at least 37%. We explored the variety of moderating variables causing these variations. A deeper color induced by MYBs caused higher plant attributes as compared to normal color changes. MYB genes from dicots stimulated the accumulation of anthocyanins, flavonols and impacted the expressions of PAL, CHS, CHI, FLS, F3′5′H, ANS, UFGT, and ANR as compared to monocots. Heterologous expression and homologous expression showed a great difference in anthocyanin biosynthesis. Transient gene transformation had a significant effect on the expression of flavonoid biosynthetic genes, and stable transformation had a significant effect on flavonoid accumulation. Stress could result in a significantly increased accumulation of flavonoids, especially anthocyanin, flavonol, and proanthocyanidin. Our study, thus, provides new insights into the function of MYBs in the regulatory mechanisms of flavonoid biosynthesis and the use of genetic engineering for improving anthocyanins contents.

Highlights

Anthocyanins are a flavonoid class of phenylpropanoid compounds and are widely distributed in land plants (Buer et al, 2010; Albert et al, 2014; Xu et al, 2015)
We found that the expression of anthocyanin-specific biosynthesis genes (F3 H, F3 5 H, dihydroflavonol 4-reductase (DFR), anthocyanidin synthase (ANS), and UDPflavonoid glucosyl transferase (UFGT)) was associated with the number of visual tissues of overexpression plants, and multiple tissues resulted in the transcriptional level of F3 5 H, ANS, and UFGT having a greater effect than one (Figure 7 and Supplementary Figures 6B, 7, 8)
We conducted an integrative meta-analysis of a large number of studies investigating the responses of MYB overexpression in transformed plants (TC) plants in anthocyanin biosynthesis

Summary

Introduction

Anthocyanins are a flavonoid class of phenylpropanoid compounds and are widely distributed in land plants (Buer et al, 2010; Albert et al, 2014; Xu et al, 2015). Anthocyanin accumulation in vacuoles accounts for the red to blue color range of various tissues, including roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits (Ben Zvi et al, 2008; Kim et al, 2010; Fan et al, 2020; Zhong et al, 2020; Xia et al, 2021) They play crucial roles in plant stress resistance by acting as scavengers of excess reactive oxygen species (ROS) (Buer et al, 2010; Naing et al, 2018; Shen et al, 2019; Ma et al, 2021). MYB transcription factors (TFs) are the most important genes the anthocyanidin biosynthesis pathway (Yan et al, 2021)

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