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Assessment of sugar and sugar accumulation-related gene expression profiles reveal new insight into the formation of low sugar accumulation trait in a sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) bud mutant

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Abstract

The accumulation of soluble sugars in fleshy fruits largely determines their sweetness or taste. A spontaneous sweet orange mutant ‘Hong Anliu’ (HAL, Citrus sinensis) accumulates low soluble sugar content in fruit juice sacs than its wild type, ‘Anliu’ (AL) orange; however, the cause of reduced sugar content in ‘HAL’ fruit remains unclear. In this study, sugar content and expression profiles of genes involved in sugar metabolism and transport were compared between ‘HAL’ and ‘AL’ fruit juice sacs. In both cultivars, fructose and glucose displayed the increasing trends with significantly lower contents in ‘HAL’ than ‘AL’ after 160 DAF; moreover, sucrose had a declining trend in ‘HAL’ and increasing trend in ‘AL’ with fruit development. On the other hand, transcript levels of VINV, CWINV1, CWINV2, SUS4, SUS5, SPS1, SPS2, VPP-1, VPP-2, and some sugar transporter genes were significantly decreased in ‘HAL’ compared with ‘AL’ after 100 DAF or 160 DAF. Interestingly, the transcript levels of SPS2 and SUT2 exhibited a similar trend as it was found for sucrose content in both cultivars. These results suggested that the low sugar accumulation in ‘HAL’ fruit JS is accompanied by the reduced sink strength, sucrose-synthesis ability, and vacuolar storage ability compared with ‘AL’; reduction of CWINVs, VINV, SPS2, SUT2, VPP-1, and VPP-2 transcript levels possibly plays a key role in the low storage of soluble sugars in the vacuoles of mutant juice sacs.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Dr. Linlin Zhong for technical support with gas–liquid chromatography.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key R & D Program of China (2019YFD1000101) and the earmarked fund for China Agriculture Research System (CARS-26).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology (Ministry of Education), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, People’s Republic of China

    Syed Bilal Hussain, Ling-Xia Guo, Cai-Yun Shi, Muhammad Abbas Khan, Ying-Xing Bai, Wei Du & Yong-Zhong Liu

  2. College of Horticulture & Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, People’s Republic of China

    Syed Bilal Hussain, Ling-Xia Guo, Cai-Yun Shi, Muhammad Abbas Khan, Ying-Xing Bai, Wei Du & Yong-Zhong Liu

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  1. Syed Bilal Hussain
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Hussain, S.B., Guo, LX., Shi, CY. et al. Assessment of sugar and sugar accumulation-related gene expression profiles reveal new insight into the formation of low sugar accumulation trait in a sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) bud mutant. Mol Biol Rep 47, 2781–2791 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11033-020-05387-6

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