Identification of important genetic resources of tea oil accumulation and quality formation in Camellia oleifera based on gene expression

To identify the important genetic resources of tea oil accumulation and quality formation in Camellia oleifera, an important woody edible oil tree native to Southern China, we have designed and customized an expression profile chip of C. oleifera with 8×60 K on the basis of transcriptome sequencing of multiple tissue samples including kernels, roots, and leaves from multiple varieties. we used the mcroarrays to determine the gene expressions in kernel development of C. oleifera elite varieties'Huashuo' , 'Huaxin' , 'Huajin' and 'Jujian' respectively. Microarray results indicated a total of 10710 gene probes showed stable differential expression in the comparation of August vs June and 9987 in the comparation of October vs August. PATHWAY enrichment results of DEGs indicated that the oil synthesis and accumulation occured in the whole kernel development of C. oleifera, but were mainly concentrated from the nutrition high-speed synthesis period to the seed mature period, which was consistent with the variation trend of oil content and fatty acide composition in C. oleifera kernel development. In this study, twenty-four samples from three kernel developing stages of four C. oleifera elite varieties 'Huashuo' , 'Huaxin' , 'Huajin' and 'Jujian' were hybridized with the microarray of C. oleifera gene expression profile chip customized in Agilent respectively. The slected three kernel developing stages include the fruit swelling period (samples at June 30th), the nutrition high-speed synthesis period (samples at August 30th) and the seed mature period (samples at October 25th). biological repeat hybridization once for each period.