Co-analysis of the metabolomics and transcriptomics reveals regulation network of mint pigment and flavone

Mint is considered to have a greater number of phenolic acids, flavonoids, antioxidants and other bioactive components, and is widely used as food, medicine, spices, and flavoring agents. Thus, metabolites composition is an important parameter for assessing the quality of mint. In this study, two mint cultivars (Mentha canadensis L.) were sampled, purple mint and green mint. The purple mint had much higher anthocyanin and total flavone content compared with green mint. Transcriptomics and metabolomics technique were employed to elucidate the regulation network of mint pigment and flavone. A total of 167,901 unigenes were obtained by high-throughput RNA-Seq and 34,608 genes were differentially expressed. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were mainly involved in lignin metabolic process and flavonoid biosynthetic process. A total of 143 differentially expressed metabolites (DEMs) were enriched in isoflavonoid, flavonoid biosynthesis, flavone and flavonol biosynthesis, and anthocyanin biosynthesis pathways. The co-analysis results of DEGs and DEMs showed that the flavone and flavonol biosynthesis pathway (ko00944) contained the most DEMs, followed by flavonoid biosynthesis pathway (ko00941) and anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway (ko00942). Furthermore, the most important nine genes and metabolites were screened using O2PLS model. The results will provide a theoretical basis for revealing pigment and flavone biosynthesis network of mint.