Integrated metabolomic and transcriptomic analysis reveals distinct accumulation patterns in three Brassicaceae crops

Brassica napus, Camelina sativa and field pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) are three important oilseed crops in the Brassicaceae family. As sessile organisms, these crops are continuously exposed to various stresses when grown in the field. Interestingly, the responses of these three crops to different environmental stimuli vary to a great extent, but there is very limited knowledge about the molecular basis of these discrepancies. In this study, we employed untargeted metabolomics to compare the metabolic profile of these crops, and examined the potential causal genes through further integration with transcriptomic analysis. Our data revealed distinctive overall metabolic profiles among these three crops, where in particular, a variety of phenylpropanoids showed differential accumulation and the corresponding putative genes' expression varied significantly. Our results here will provide valuable insight into the understanding of metabolic variations among these three important oilseed crops, and provide potential targets for the future breeding of stress tolerant crops. Overall design: Untargeted metabolomics and RNAseq data were collected from the leaves and cotyledons of three Brassicaceae crops to compare their metabolic profiles