RESEARCH ARTICLE RNA-sequencing analysis reveals betalains metabolism in the leaf of Amaranthus tricolor L. Shengcai Liu1☯, Xueli Zheng1☯, Junfei Pan1, Liyun Peng1, Chunzhen Cheng1, Xiao Wang1, 1 1 1 1,2 1 Chunli Zhao , Zihao Zhang , Yuling Lin , Xu XuHan *, Zhongxiong LaiID * 1 Institute of Horticultural Biotechnology, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China, 2 Institut de la Recherche Interdisciplinaire de Toulouse, Toulouse, France ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. *
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[email protected] (XXH) a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 Abstract a1111111111 Amaranth plants contain large amounts of betalains, including betaxanthins and betacya- nins. Amaranthin is a betacyanin, and its molecular structure and associated metabolic pathway differ from those of betanin in beet plants. The chlorophyll, carotenoid, betalain, and flavonoid contents in amaranth leaves were analyzed. The abundance of betalain, beta- OPEN ACCESS cyanin, and betaxanthin was 2±5-fold higher in the red leaf sectors than in the green leaf Citation: Liu S, Zheng X, Pan J, Peng L, Cheng C, sectors. Moreover, a transcriptome database was constructed for the red and green sectors Wang X, et al. (2019) RNA-sequencing analysis of amaranth leaves harvested from 30-day-old seedlings. 22 unigenes were selected to ana- reveals betalains metabolism in the leaf of Amaranthus tricolor L.. PLoS ONE 14(4): lyze the expression profiles in the two leaf sectors. The RNA-sequencing data indicated that e0216001. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. many unigenes are involved in betalain metabolic pathways. The potential relationships pone.0216001 between diverse metabolic pathways and betalain metabolism were analyzed.