title: Spatio-temporal distribution and natural variation of metabolites in citrus fruits.
abstract: To study the natural variation and spatio-temporal accumulation of citrus metabolites, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based metabolome analysis was performed on four fruit tissues (flavedo, albedo, segment membrane and juice sacs) and different Citrus species (lemon, pummelo and grapefruit, sweet orange and mandarin). Using a non-targeted metabolomics approach, more than 2000 metabolite signals were detected, from which more than 54 metabolites, including amino acids, flavonoids and limonoids, were identified/annotated. Differential accumulation patterns of both primary metabolites and secondary metabolites in various tissues and species were revealed by our study. Further investigation indicated that flavedo accumulates more flavonoids while juice sacs contain more amino acids. Besides this, cluster analysis based on the levels of metabolites detected in 47 individual Citrus accessions clearly grouped them into four distinct clusters: pummelos and grapefruits, lemons, sweet oranges and mandarins, while the cluster of pummelos and grapefruits lay distinctly apart from the other three species.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement and National Center of Plant Gene Research (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
authors.forename: Shouchuang
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology (Ministry of Education), College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement and National Center of Plant Gene Research (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement and National Center of Plant Gene Research (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
authors.forename: Xianqing
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement and National Center of Plant Gene Research (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China; College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology (Ministry of Education), College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China. Electronic address: xujuan@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Juan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology (Ministry of Education), College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China. Electronic address: zhanghy@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Hongyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D002853:Chromatography, Liquid; D002957:Citrus / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D005419:Flavonoids / Q000032:analysis; D005638:Fruit / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D036701:Limonins / Q000032:analysis; D013058:Mass Spectrometry; D055432:Metabolomics
chemical_list: D005419:Flavonoids; D036701:Limonins
keywords: Amino acid; Apigenin (PubChem CID: 5280443); Aspartic acid (PubChem CID: 5960); Citrus fruits; Flavonoids; Isoleucine (PubChem CID: 6306); Leucine (PubChem CID: 6106); Limonin (PubChem CID: 179651); Luteolin (PubChem CID: 5280445); Metabolite profiling; Natural variation; Nomilin (PubChem CID: 326240); Proline (PubChem CID: 145742); Quercetin (PubChem CID: 5280343); Tricin (PubChem CID: 5281702); Valine (PubChem CID: 6287)