No abstract

Background: Fruit skin color intensity is one of the most important economic traits of purple eggplant. A wide diversity for fruit skin color intensity exists in purple eggplant and the accumulation of anthocyanins and chlorophylls of fruit skin mainly affected color intensity. However, limited information is available contributing to the molecular mechanisms underlying fruit skin color intensity variation in eggplant.Results: In the present study, variation of two purple eggplant advanced lines EP26 and EP28, with different fruit skin color intensity was investigated. Comparative transcriptome analysis of EP26 and EP28 identified a total of 2218 differential expressed genes (DEGs) at two different developmental stages. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis showed that these DEGs were mainly involved in flavonoid biosynthesis and photosynthesis. In addition, a total of 131 transcription factors including MYB , bHLH , WRKY , and NAC exhibited dynamic changes, which might be responsible for the variation of fruit pigments accumulation between EP26 and EP28.Conclusions: Taken together, these results expand our knowledge of molecular mechanisms underlying fruit skin color intensity variation in purple eggplant, which allowing for improvement of fruit coloration in eggplant breeding.

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play critical roles in plant development and stress responses. So far, identification of lncRNA in eggplant response to stresses has been limited and the role in mediating response to cold stress is yet to be characterized in eggplant. In this study, there is reported the first dataset of lncRNAs responsive to cold stress in the cold tolerant and sensitive eggplants using RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). 227 and 225 differentially expressed (DE) lncRNAs were obtained in two genotypes with differential cold-tolerance. Functional characterization through gene ontology (GO) analysis indicated that target genes were particularly related to acyl-CoA dehydrogenase activity and pseudouridine synthase activity, which could result in the tolerant phenotypes. Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) showed that target genes in both sensitive and tolerant eggplants were mainly involved in cold responsive pathways such as oxidative phosphorylation, peroxisome, protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, ubiquitin mediated proteolysis and so on. However, the enriched pathways obtained by enrichment analysis in cold-tolerant eggplant were different from those in cold-sensitive eggplant, which further indicated the reason for different tolerances. Our findings highlight the potential contributions of lncRNAs in regulating eggplant response to cold stress and difference in cold tolerance.