ORIGINAL RESEARCH
How Exogenous Selenium Affects Anthocyanin
Accumulation and Biosynthesis-Related Gene
Expression in Purple Lettuce
Dandan Liu, Hui Li, Yongzhu Wang, Zhengzheng Ying, Zhiwei Bian,
Wenli Zhu, Wei Liu, Lifei Yang, Dahua Jiang
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College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
Submission date: 2016-09-12
Final revision date: 2016-11-03
Acceptance date: 2016-11-03
Online publication date: 2017-03-22
Publication date: 2017-03-22
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2017;26(2):717-722
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ABSTRACT
We studied the effects of selenite on growth and anthocyanin accumulation in purple lettuce. The results
will ascertain which selenite concentration is more advantageous to the purple lettuce and help study the
effect of selenite on the molecular mechanism of plant anthocyanin accumulation using the quantitative
reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). In this study, the low selenite concentrations
(≤ 8μM) could not only promote purple lettuce growth including plant height, leaf area (LA), and fresh
weight (FW), but also the anthocyanin contents which may be due to how the selenite affects the UDPglycose
flavonoid glycosyl transferase (UFGT) and flavanone 3-hydroxylase (F3H) genes expression
of anthocyanin biosynthesis. Next, on the basis of the obtained results from the preliminary experiments,
8 μM selenite was used to analyze the anthocyanin accumulation with the treatment time prolonged.
Although the anthocyanin content of purple lettuce was not reduced on day 24, the control plants were
significantly decreased. The reason may be that compared with the control plants, UFGT and F3H genes
were markedly up-regulated on day 24. Therefore, the influence of selenium on anthocyanin accumulation
and molecular regulation of anthocyanin synthesis is mainly due to the expression levels of the F3H and
UFGT gene. It needs to be a further studied.