Background: Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is an important economic crop and traditional medicine riching in flavonoids, which can significantly improve cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. Thus, many candidate genes for safflower flavonoid biosynthesis were cloned. However, due to the lack of homologous gene expression system, gene function research can only be carried out in model plants. It is necessary to establish gene function identification protocol in safflower.
Results: In this study, using safflower callus as experimental material, Agrobacterium transient expression system and bilolistic transient expression system were established. In the Agrobacterium transient expression system, the highest transformation rate were obtained at original Agrobacterium density of OD600 0.4, concentration of OD600 0.6, infection for 20 min, co-culture for 3 d, and AS concentration at 100 μmol·L-1. In biolistic transient expression system, the highest transformation efficiency were observed at 1350 psi helium pressure, -0.8 bar vacuum degree, 6.5 cm flight distance, the bombardment once, 3 μg·shot-1 of plasmid amount, and 100 μg·shot-1 of gold particles amount. These two transient expression systems were used for the gene function analysis of CtCHS1 as an example. After overexpression, the relative expression of CtCHS1 was increased, especially in the Agrobacterium-transformed callus. The content of some flavonoids also changed, naringenin and genistein were significantly increased in Agrobacterium-transformed callus, and luteolin, luteolin-7-O-rutinoside and apigenin derivative were significantly decreased in biolistic-transformed callus.
Conclusion: Using safflower callus as the experimental material, Agrobacterium transient expression system and bilolistic transient expression system with high expression efficiency were successfully established, and demonstrating that both transient expression systems can be used to verify gene function. The safflower callus transient expression system will be a useful methods for further analysis in gene function analysis of flavonoid biosynthesis in safflower.