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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biotechnology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1495784

Unraveling Site-Specific Seed Formation Abnormalities in Picea Neoveitchii Mast. Trees via Widely Metabolomic and Transcriptomic Analysis

Provisionally accepted
Kaiyuan Li Kaiyuan Li 1Jiayi Lin Jiayi Lin 1Rong Fan Rong Fan 1Sibo Chen Sibo Chen 1Zhilin Ma Zhilin Ma 2Wenli Ji Wenli Ji 1*
  • 1 College of Landscape Architecture and Art, Northwest A&F University, xianyang, China
  • 2 Shaanxi Academy of Forestry, Shaanxi, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Picea neoveitchii Mast. is a rare and threatened species of evergreen coniferous tree in China, commonly facing issues such as damaged seeds, abnormal seed growth, and empty seed shells.These abnormalities vary by location; unfortunately, the reasons behind these inconsistencies are completely unknown. This study compared seeds from two 150-year-old trees located in Taibai (Shaanxi province, TB150) and Zhouqu (Gansu province, ZQ150). The results showed significant differences in 43 metabolites and hormone levels, with higher levels of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), methyl jasmonate (MeJA), and brassinosteroid (BR) in ZQ150, which were associated with more viable seeds. In contrast, TB150 exhibited more damaged seeds and empty seed shells due to higher abscisic acid (ABA) levels. Moreover, to further investigate these inconsistencies, we performed de novo transcriptomic assembly and functional annotation of unigenes using highthroughput sequencing. A total of 2355 differentially expressed unigenes were identified between TB150 and ZQ150, with 1280 upregulated and 1075 downregulated. Hormone signaling and sugar metabolism-related unigenes were further examined for their role in seed development. ZQ150 increased the number of normal seeds by enhancing endogenous IAA levels and upregulating auxin signaling and sugar metabolism related genes. Conversely, TB150 showed more empty seed shells, corelated with elevated ABA levels and the activation of ABA signaling genes. We hypothesize that enhanced IAA levels and the upregulation of sugar metabolism and auxin signaling genes promote normal seed development.

    Keywords: Conifer, Empty seed shell, Endogenous hormones, sugar, Widely metabolomic, Transcriptomic Analysis

    Received: 13 Sep 2024; Accepted: 14 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Li, Lin, Fan, Chen, Ma and Ji. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Wenli Ji, College of Landscape Architecture and Art, Northwest A&F University, xianyang, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.