Parallel Metabolomic and Transcriptomic Analysis Reveals Key Factors for Quality Improvement of Tea Plants

As one of the most popular beverages
globally, tea has enormous
economic, cultural, and medicinal importance that necessitates a comprehensive
metabolomics study of this species. In this study, a large-scale targeted
metabolomics analysis on two types of leaf tissues of nine tea cultivars
from five representative geographical origins within China was carried
out using the liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry technique. RNA-seq-based
transcriptomic analysis was in parallel conducted on the same samples,
and gene expression and metabolic differentiation between tissues
as well as between the multiple tea cultivars were investigated. The
data obtained provide an accessible resource for further studies of
naturally occurring metabolic variation of tea plants, which will
aid in thoroughly interpreting the underlying genetic and molecular
mechanisms of biosynthesis of specialized metabolites in this critical
species. Candidate genes including a transcription factor (CsMYB5-like),
which were highly correlated with both the content of flavonoids and
the expression level of genes participating in the phenylpropanoid
and flavonoid biosynthesis pathway, were identified as potential targets
for quality improvement of tea.