Macadamia ternifolia Transcriptome or Gene expression

Abstract: Macadamia nuts are considered a high-quality oil crop worldwide. To date, lipid diversity and genetic factors that mediate storage lipid biosynthesis in Macadamia ternifolia are poorly known. Here, we performed a comprehensive transcriptomic and lipidomic data analysis to understand the mechanism of lipid biosynthesis by using young, medium, and mature fruit kernels of M. ternifolia. The results showed that M. ternifolia kernel is a rich source of unsaturated fatty acids with significantly different lipid compositions and final content levels. Moreover, different species of triacylglycerols, diacylglycerol, ceramides, phosphatidylethanolamine, and phosphatidic acid had altered accumulation during the developmental stages. The transcriptome analysis revealed a large percentage of differently expressed genes during the different stages of fruit kernel growth. Most of the genes with significant differential expression performed functional activity of oxidoreductase and were enriched in metabolite pathway. The integration of lipidomic and transcriptome data allowed the identification of GPAT, GPAT, DGK, PI, NPC, PK2, KAR, and LOX as putative candidate genes involved in lipid biosynthesis, storage, and oil quality. Our study presents comprehensive datasets of lipidomic and transcriptomic changes during developing fruit kernel of M. ternifolia. In addition, identification of candidate genes provides essential prerequisites to understand the molecular mechanism of lipid biosynthesis in fruit kernels.