Tea plant (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) is one of the most important economic crops with multiple mutants. Recently, we found a special tea germplasm that has an aberrant tissue on its branches. To figure out whether this aberrant tissue is associated with floral bud (FB) or dormant bud (DB), we performed tissue section, transcriptome sequencing, and metabolomic analysis of these tissues. Longitudinal sections indicated the aberrant tissue internal structure was more like a special bud (SB), but was similar to that of DB. Transcriptome data analysis showed that the number of heterozygous and homozygous SNPs was significantly different in the aberrant tissue compared with FB and DB. Further, by aligning the unmapped sequences of the aberrant tissue to the Non-Redundant Protein Sequences (NR) database, we observed that 36.13% of unmapped sequences were insect sequences, which suggested that the aberrant tissue might be a variation of dormant bud tissue influenced by the interaction of tea plants and insects or pathogens. Metabolomic analysis showed that the differentially expressed metabolites (DEMs) between the aberrant tissue and DB were significantly enriched in the metabolic pathways of biosynthesis of plant hormones and biosynthesis of phenylpropanoids. Subsequently, we analyzed the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the above mentioned two tissues, and the results indicated that photosynthetic capacity in the aberrant tissue was reduced, whereas the ethylene, salicylic acid and jasmonic acid signaling pathways were activated. We speculated that exogenous infection induced programmed cell death (PCD) and increased the lignin content in dormant buds of tea plants, leading to the formation of this aberrant tissue. This study advanced our understanding of the interaction between plants and insects or pathogens, providing important clues about biotic stress factors and key genes that lead to mutations and formation of the aberrant tissue.

茶树（山茶(L.) O. Kuntze) 是具有多个突变体的最重要的经济作物之一。最近，我们发现了一种特殊的茶种质，它的枝条上有一个异常组织。为了弄清楚这种异常组织是否与花芽 (FB) 或休眠芽 (DB) 相关，我们对这些组织进行了组织切片、转录组测序和代谢组学分析。纵向切片表明异常组织内部结构更像一个特殊的芽（SB），但与DB的相似。转录组数据分析表明，与 FB 和 DB 相比，异常组织中杂合和纯合 SNP 的数量显着不同。此外，通过将异常组织的未映射序列与非冗余蛋白质序列 (NR) 数据库进行比对，我们观察到 36.13% 的未映射序列是昆虫序列，这表明异常组织可能是受茶树与昆虫或病原体相互作用影响的休眠芽组织的变异。代谢组学分析表明，异常组织和 DB 之间差异表达的代谢物 (DEM) 在植物激素生物合成和苯丙烷类生物合成的代谢途径中显着富集。随后，我们分析了上述两种组织中的差异表达基因（DEGs），结果表明异常组织的光合能力降低，而乙烯、水杨酸和茉莉酸信号通路被激活。我们推测外源感染诱导了程序性细胞死亡（PCD）并增加了茶树休眠芽中的木质素含量，导致这种异常组织的形成。这项研究加深了我们对植物与昆虫或病原体之间相互作用的理解，提供了关于生物胁迫因素和导致突变和异常组织形成的关键基因的重要线索。