Integrated volatile metabolome and transcriptome analyses provide insights into the warm aroma formation elicited by methyl jasmonate in carrot root

Front Plant Sci. 2024 Sep 18:15:1467957. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1467957. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Carrot is a highly significant vegetable cultivated worldwide and possesses a unique aroma with abundant edible and medicinal values. However, it remains largely unknown whether jasmonic acid could regulate aroma formation in carrot. Here, an integrated analysis of the volatile metabolome and transcriptome of carrot roots exposed to different concentrations of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) was performed. The results revealed 1,227 volatile organic compounds and 972 differential accumulated metabolites, with terpenes representing the largest portion. MeJA treatment evidently increased the relative odor activity values as well as the accumulation of most volatile compounds. In addition, 4,787 differentially expressed genes were identified and subjected to function enrichment analysis, indicating a role of terpene biosynthesis and metabolism in response to MeJA application. A network consisting of 4,680 transcription factor-structural pairs that showed highly significant positive correlations was constructed, which may be utilized as genetic targets for examining terpene accumulation and aroma formation elicited by methyl jasmonate. The results from the present work substantially improved our understanding of MeJA-mediated aroma formation in carrot.

Keywords: MeJA; carrot; terpenes; transcription-structural genes; transcriptome; volatile metabolome.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32372681, 32102369), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20211366), New Century Excellent Talent of the Ministry of Education (NCET-11-0670) and Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars (BK20130027).