Publications by authors named "Fangdong Li"

Domestication has shaped the population structure and agronomic traits of tea plants, yet the complexity of tea population structure and genetic variation that determines these traits remains unclear. We here investigated the resequencing data of 363 diverse tea accessions collected extensively from almost all tea distributions and found that the population structure of tea plants was divided into eight subgroups, which were basically consistent with their geographical distributions. The genetic diversity of tea plants in China decreased from southwest to east as latitude increased.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chinese cherry () holds considerable importance as one of the primary stone fruit crops in China. However, artificially improving its traits and genetic analysis are challenging due to lack of high-quality genomic resources, which mainly result from difficulties associated with resolving its tetraploid and highly heterozygous genome. Herein, we assembled a chromosome-level, haplotype-resolved genome of the cultivar 'Zhuji Duanbing', comprising 993.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates the transfer of genetic material and metabolites between rootstocks and scions in long-distance grafting, particularly focusing on hybrids created from genetically-distant plants belonging to different families.
  • After 25 years of growth, the hybrid plants displayed intermediate traits, and their new characteristics remained consistent through vegetative propagation.
  • Genetic analysis revealed 2,113 differentially expressed genes and 1,188 metabolic compounds, shedding light on how interfamily grafting influences the phenotype and genetic adaptability of these hybrids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Researchers discovered that a protein called LUX ARRHYTHMO (LUX) plays a crucial role in helping tea plants (Camellia sinensis) tolerate cold stress, which can hurt both the plant's quality and yield.
  • - The study showed that the expression of the CsLUX gene varies with the time of day and increases significantly when the plants experience cold temperatures, indicating its role in regulating freezing tolerance.
  • - A specific genetic variation (C-to-A) in the CsLUX gene was identified as beneficial for cold response, highlighting its potential use as a molecular marker in breeding programs aimed at enhancing cold resistance in tea plants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Dioecy, a rare sexual system in flowering plants characterized by male and female individuals, may often transition into co-sexual systems, such as monoecy and hermaphroditism.
  • This study discovered that the diploid species Diospyros oleifera shows both monoecious and andro(gyno)monoecious traits, contradicting earlier beliefs that this co-sexual expression was exclusive to polyploid species.
  • The research identified genetic mechanisms, including the presence of the male determinant gene OGI and various genomic changes, that facilitate the shift from dioecy to co-sexuality in D. oleifera, suggesting a stable breakdown of the dioecious system influenced by genomic characteristics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The genus Camellia consists of about 200 species, which include many economically important species widely used for making tea, ornamental flowers and edible oil. Here, we present an updated tea plant information archive for Camellia genomics (TPIA2; http://tpia.teaplants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

is a rare and precious relict plant in China. It is an important genetic resource for almond improvement and an indispensable material in ecological protection and landscaping. However, the research into molecular breeding and genetic evolution has been severely restricted due to the lack of genome information.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Persimmon () fruit have significant variation between pollination-constant non-astringent (PCNA) and pollination-constant astringent (PCA) persimmons. The astringency type affects not only the soluble tannin concentration but also the accumulation of individual sugars. Thus, we comprehensively investigate the gene expression and metabolite profiles of individual sugars to resolve the formation of flavor differences in PCNA and PCA persimmon fruit.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Artificially improving persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.), one of the most important fruit trees, remains challenging owing to the lack of reference genomes. In this study, we generated an allele-aware chromosome-level genome assembly for the autohexaploid persimmon 'Xiaoguotianshi' (Chinese-PCNA type) using PacBio CCS and Hi-C technology.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Glyphosate residues can tremendously impact the physiological mechanisms of tea plants, thus threatening tea security and human health. Herein, integrated physiological, metabolite, and proteomic analyses were performed to reveal the glyphosate stress response mechanism in tea plant. After exposure to glyphosate (≥1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dioecy system is an important strategy for maintaining genetic diversity. The transcription factor , contributes to dioecy by promoting gynoecium development in and . However, the function of in has not been identified.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Chilling stress threatens the yield and distribution pattern of global crops, including the tea plant (), one of the most important cash crops around the world. Circular RNA (circRNA) plays roles in regulating plant growth and biotic/abiotic stress responses. Understanding the evolutionary characteristics of circRNA and its feedbacks to chilling stress in the tea plant will help to elucidate the vital roles of circRNAs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The flowers of tea plants (), as well as tea leaves, contain abundant secondary metabolites and are big potential resources for the extraction of bioactive compounds or preparation of functional foods. However, little is known about the biosynthesis and transcriptional regulation mechanisms of those metabolites in tea flowers, such as terpenoid, flavonol, catechins, caffeine, and theanine. This study finely integrated target and nontarget metabolism analyses to explore the metabolic feature of developing tea flowers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Research on crop sexuality is important for establishing systems for germplasm innovation and cultivating improved varieties. In this study, androecious persimmon trees were treated with various concentrations of ethrel (100, 500, and 1,000 mg/L) and zeatin (1, 5, and 10 mg/L) to investigate the morphological, physiological, and molecular characteristics of persimmon. Ethrel at 1,000 mg/L and zeatin at 10 mg/L both significantly reduced the stamen length and pollen grain diameter in androecious trees.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Camellia plants include more than 200 species of great diversity and immense economic, ornamental, and cultural values. We sequenced the transcriptomes of 116 Camellia plants from almost all sections of the genus Camellia. We constructed a pan-transcriptome of Camellia plants with 89 394 gene families and then resolved the phylogeny of genus Camellia based on 405 high-quality low-copy core genes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Caffeine is a characteristic bioactive compound in tea and coffee plants, which is synthesized and accumulated extensively in leaves and seeds. However, little is known about the regulatory mechanism of caffeine synthesis in plants. This study compared the caffeine metabolite between tea and coffee plants.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The tea plant (Camellia sinensis) is a thermophilic cash crop and contains a highly duplicated and repeat-rich genome. It is still unclear how DNA methylation regulates the evolution of duplicated genes and chilling stress in tea plants. We therefore generated a single-base-resolution DNA methylation map of tea plants under chilling stress.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Tea plant is an important economic crop, which is used to produce the world's oldest and most widely consumed tea beverages. Here, we present a high-quality reference genome assembly of the tea plant (Camellia sinensis var. sinensis) consisting of 15 pseudo-chromosomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To get a more detailed understanding of the interaction between tea plant (Camellia sinensis) and tea geometrids (Ectropis obliqua), transcriptomic profile in undamaged adjacent leaf (TGL) of tea geometrids fed local leaves (LL) was investigated for the first time. Here, approximately 245 million clean reads contained 39.39 Gb of sequence data were obtained from TGL.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Diospyros oleifera Cheng, of the family Ebenaceae, is an economically important tree. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that D. oleifera is closely related to Diospyros kaki Thunb.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Aims: Persimmon (Diospyros kaki) is an economically important fruit tree species with complex flowering characteristics. To obtain accurate expression pattern analysis results, it is vital to select a reliable gene for the normalization of real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction data. The aim of this study was to identify the optimal internal control gene among six candidate genes for gene expression analysis in different persimmon organs and developmental stages.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Tea is the oldest and among the world's most popular non-alcoholic beverages, which has important economic, health and cultural values. Tea is commonly produced from the leaves of tea plants (Camellia sinensis), which belong to the genus Camellia of family Theaceae. In the last decade, many studies have generated the transcriptomes of tea plants at different developmental stages or under abiotic and/or biotic stresses to investigate the genetic basis of secondary metabolites that determine tea quality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Theanine, a unique non-proteinogenic amino acid, is an important component of tea, as it confers the umami taste and relaxation effect of tea as a beverage. Theanine is primarily synthesized in tea roots and is subsequently transported to young shoots, which are harvested for tea production. Currently, the mechanism for theanine transport in the tea plant remains unknown.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF