Tea (Camellia sinensis): A Review of Nutritional Composition, Potential Applications, and Omics Research

Abstract

Tea (Camelliasinensis) is the world’s most widely consumed non-alcoholic beverage with essential economic and health benefits since it is an excellent source of polyphenols, catechins, amino acids, flavonoids, carotenoids, vitamins, and polysaccharides. The aim of this review is to summarize the main secondary metabolites in tea plants, and the content and distribution of these compounds in six different types of tea and different organs of tea plant were further investigated. The application of these secondary metabolites on food processing, cosmetics industry, and pharmaceutical industry was reviewed in this study. With the rapid advancements in biotechnology and sequencing technology, omics analyses, including genome, transcriptome, and metabolome, were widely used to detect the main secondary metabolites and their molecular regulatory mechanisms in tea plants. Numerous functional genes and regulatory factors have been discovered, studied, and applied to improve tea plants. Research advances, including secondary metabolites, applications, omics research, and functional gene mining, are comprehensively reviewed here. Further exploration and application trends are briefly described. This review provides a reference for basic and applied research on tea plants.

Ultrasonic-assisted enzymatic improvement of polyphenol content, antioxidant potential, and in vitro inhibitory effect on digestive enzymes of Miang extracts

“…NFP Miang contains TP content of 100 mg GAE/g dw and TC content of 5 mg QE/g dw [14] , yet the results of this study indicated 1.5- and 2.5-times higher TP and TC contents, respectively. Green tea made from young tea leaves possessed TP ranging from 108.8 to 323.6 mg/g dw [13] , [38] , which was higher than that of oolong tea (103.5–297.3 mg/g dw), black tea (130.1–181.7 mg/g dw), and dark tea (78.2–162.9 mg/g dw) [13] . The main classes of flavonoids found in tea are flavanols and flavonols.…”

Comparative transcriptome database forCamellia sinensisreveals genes important for flavonoid synthesis in tea plants

“…Tea leaves contain a large amount of flavonoids, which are the most important class of secondary metabolites in tea and one of the key factors determining its unique quality (Wang et al, 2022). Therefore, studying the key genes involved in flavonoid synthesis pathways can provide us with more insights into the formation of the unique qualities of tea.…”

“…As one of the most popular non-alcoholic beverages worldwide, tea contains a wide range of secondary metabolites beneficial to human health, such as polyphenols, alkaloids, and amino acids (Wang et al, 2022). With the unique qualities of tea plants ( Camellia sinensis ) attracting an increasing number of researchers to study various aspects of tea plants, such as secondary metabolites and phenotypic variations (Zhao et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2022; Liao et al, 2022), the omics dataset of Camellia sinensis has also become increasingly extensive.…”

“…As one of the most popular non-alcoholic beverages worldwide, tea contains a wide range of secondary metabolites beneficial to human health, such as polyphenols, alkaloids, and amino acids (Wang et al, 2022). With the unique qualities of tea plants ( Camellia sinensis ) attracting an increasing number of researchers to study various aspects of tea plants, such as secondary metabolites and phenotypic variations (Zhao et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2022; Liao et al, 2022), the omics dataset of Camellia sinensis has also become increasingly extensive. This has led to the use of systems biology approaches on sequencing data hosted on public databases (Tai et al, 2018; Xia et al, 2020; Zhao et al, 2021), such as gene co-expression analysis, becoming a trend in analyzing omics data of Camellia sinensis , providing tea researchers with a more macroscopic and comprehensive perspective.…”

Evaluation of the antibacterial activity of selected Kenyan medicinal plant extract combinations against clinically important bacteria

“…Flavonoids bind with intracellular proteins as well as soluble proteins present in the bacterial cell walls. Steroids are shown to form complexes with membrane lipids thus resulting in leakage [ 21 , 72 , 73 ]. These compounds present in In C. sinensis , may have contributed to the observed antibacterial effect.…”