Functional Characterization of AP2/ERF Transcription Factors during Flower Development and Anthocyanin Biosynthesis Related Candidate Genes in .

The APETALA2/ethylene-responsive transcription factor (AP2/ERF) family has been extensively investigated because of its significant involvement in plant development, growth, fruit ripening, metabolism, and plant stress responses. To date, there has been little investigation into how the genes influence flower formation and anthocyanin biosynthesis in . Herein, 80 putative transcription factors (TFs) with complete open reading frames (ORFs) were retrieved from the transcriptome sequence data, which could be divided into five subfamilies dependent on their complete protein sequences. Furthermore, our findings demonstrated that genes belonging to the same subfamily had structural similarities and conserved motifs. genes were analyzed for playing an important role in plant growth, water deprivation, and flower formation by means of gene ontology (GO) enrichment analysis. The expression pattern of the genes differed across tissues and might be important for growth and flower development. In response to methyl jasmonate (MeJA) exposure and drought stress, the expression of each gene varied across tissues and time. Moreover, a total of 20 anthocyanin components were characterized using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-ESI-MS/MS) analysis, and pelargonidin-3-O-glucoside-5-O-arabinoside was identified as the major anthocyanin aglycone responsible for the coloration of the red petals in . In addition, we mapped the relationships between genes and metabolites and found that is strongly linked to pelargonidin accumulation in petals. These findings provide the basic conceptual groundwork for future research into the molecular underpinnings and regulation mechanisms of AP2/ERF TFs in anthocyanin accumulation and floral development.