Alfalfa Flower Color Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Profiles

580 common significant differentially expressed genes (CSDEGs) were identified across five alfalfa flower types, from white to four shades of purple. The metabolomic data quantifies key anthocyanins like delphinidin-3,5-O-diglucoside and malvidin-3,5-O-diglucoside across the color gradient. The dataset, authored by Hongqi Du and shared in 2026, integrates these transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses to explore purple color formation mechanisms.

Use Cases

• Identify candidate transcription factors like MYB and bHLH from the 24 TFs among the 108 trend-following CSDEGs to study their regulatory roles in anthocyanin biosynthesis.
• Analyze the correlation between the expression levels of novel genes MSTRG.59017 and MSTRG.14861 and the quantified contents of delphinidin-3,5-O-diglucoside or malvidin-3,5-O-diglucoside across the five flower types.
• Model the relationship between the decreasing ratio of blue to red pigments and the increasing anthocyanin content across the ZH1 to ZH4 purple flower gradient.
• Investigate the functional enrichment of the 29 CSDEGs definitively involved in the anthocyanin biosynthesis chain for pathway analysis.

Strengths

• Integrated multi-omics data from transcriptomics and metabolomics on five distinct biological samples (white and four purple shades).
• Identified 580 common significant differentially expressed genes (CSDEGs) with specific functional annotations related to pigment synthesis, transport, and regulation.
• Quantified specific anthocyanin molecules, including delphinidin-3,5-O-diglucoside and malvidin-3,5-O-diglucoside, providing concrete metabolite data.

Limitations

• The dataset is very small (26.8 KB DOCX file), suggesting it contains summary results or a manuscript rather than the raw sequencing or spectral data tables.
• No raw columnar data or sample data is available, limiting direct computational analysis without manual extraction from the document.
• The study focuses on a specific plant (alfalfa) and trait (flower color), limiting generalizability to other species or biological processes.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Hongqi Du.

Collection Method

Integrated analysis of LC-ESI-MS/MS metabolomics and RNA-seq transcriptomics on five alfalfa flower types.

Freshness

Last updated in March 2026.