Nelumbo nucifera seed coat

The long-lived sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) fruit provides a good platform for uncovering aging-related mechanism in extension of seed-life and improving of food quality of economic crops during storage. As the first threshold for aging -resistance, the thick fruit coat plays a major role in lotus seed longevity. Here, we investigated the transcriptome of developing seed coat to uncover the establishment of aging -resistance mechanism. RNA-seq was performed on the 6, 12 and 18 days after pollination on the seed coats. We detected 8792 genes (folds>2, FDR<0.01) were differentially expressed during seed coat development, some metabolism, DNA, RNA, stress related genes were significantly down-regulated, while transport, misc, metal handling, cell wall related genes were up-regulated. This comprehensive transcriptomic data will provide a better understanding and give further insights on lotus seed aging-resistance, which could also be applied in other crops.