Abstract:

Areca (Areca catechu L.) is one of the four primary medicinal plants in south China. In the study, the high-throughput sequencing technology was used to sequence the transcriptome of the peel and kernel in different periods to find differentially expressed genes in different developmental stages. Among the peels, 4491 differential genes were divided, of which 617 differential genes were involved in 111 KEGG metabolic pathways,257 differential genes with 82 pathways in the biological process metabolism class, and a total of 27 genes with 5 genes involved in the secondary metabolic pathway. There were 5443 differential genes in the betel nut kernel, according to the KEGG pathway annotation results, 898 differential genes were involved in 118 pathways, 466 differential genes were annotated on biological metabolic pathways for 89 pathways, 53 genes involved in secondary metabolism with 7 secondary metabolic pathways involved. Further analysis showed that with the development of fruit, 80% of the secondary metabolic pathways in the pericarp showed a down-regulated expression of the genes, while 71.4% of the secondary metabolic pathways in the kernel showed up-regulated expression. The results of the study preliminarily revealed the overall characteristics of the transcriptome of different tissues and different developmental stages of areca nut, and found that the expression of secondary metabolism-related regulatory genes in betel nut and pit were observed in different stages, which was the medicinal development and secondary of betel nut.

Key words: Areca catechu L., fruit development period, transcriptome