Integrated Analysis of Transcriptome and Metabolome Reveals New Insights into the Molecular Mechanism Underlying the Color Differences in Wolfberry (Lycium barbarum)

Wolfberry (Lycium barbarum L.) is a small Solanaceae shrub with medicinal and edible homology, widely used as ethnobotanical medicine nutraceutical food. The wolfberry fruits mainly have red, purple, yellow phenotypes. Wolfberries are rich in flavonoids, which natural water-soluble pigments that endow variety of colors plants There very few investigations on mechanism flavonoids biosynthesis fruit coloring reported about wolfberry. targeted metabolome transcriptome analysis were performed to obtain metabolite gene expression profiles yellow, purple wolfberries explain the underlying molecular color differences As result, metabolomics revealed bluish anthocyanins Malvidin petunidin trended accumulate wolf-berry, while red more yellowish flavonoids. And showed flavonoid synthesis-related genes, such CHS, F3H, ANS DFR, several MYB bHLH genes differentially expressed among different colors: most them highly than ones. In conclusion, flavonoids’ accumulation patterns may result wolfberry, or transcription factors could regulate related change composition varied colors. These findings provide new insights into ideas for breeding