Transcriptomic Insights into Osmotic Stress-Mediated Regulation of Stevioside in In Vitro Stevia rebaudiana
摘要
The present study focused on transcriptome profiling of in vitro regenerated Stevia rebaudiana genotypes to identify candidate genes involved in steviol glycosides under mannitol-induced stress. Two cultivars, CIM-Madhu and CIM-Mithi, were regenerated from nodal explants cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium with optimized concentrations of plant growth regulators. Maximum shoot regeneration (93.38%, 6.65 shoots/explant) was achieved with 1.0 mg/L BAP and 0.5 mg/L Kin, while rooting (96.67%) was highest with 1.0 mg/L IAA. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis revealed a significant increase in stevioside content under 50 g/L mannitol treatment, particularly in CIM-Mithi leaves (63.62 µg/mL). Transcriptome sequencing generated over 35 million high-quality reads assembled into 61,988 transcripts, with CIM-Madhu showing more unigenes (2474) compared to CIM-Mithi (1851). Key biosynthetic genes (KO, UGT74G1, and UGT76G1) were identified, and their expression levels were validated through qPCR, which confirmed strong upregulation under mannitol stress, particularly for UGT74G1 (4.42-fold at 50 g/L mannitol). These insights provide molecular targets for functional validation and open avenues for metabolic engineering and marker-assisted breeding to improve stevia’s commercial glycoside yield.