Mining the candidate transcription factors modulating dendrobine biosynthesis under phosphate deficiency in Dendrobium officinale Kimura & Migo

Phosphorus is integral to energy transfer and structural integrity in plants, which plays a significant role in regulating secondary metabolism. Notably, low phosphorus (LP) stress significantly improves dendrobine content in <i>Dendrobium officinale</i>, yet the molecular basis for this induction remains unclear. This study employed transcriptomic analysis to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to the dendrobine biosynthesis under LP stress in <i>D. officinale</i>. 1,713, 222, 488, and 174 DEGs were up-regulated among the different phosphorus treatment groups, including the HP (high phosphorus) vs TP (total phosphorus), MP (medium phosphorus) vs TP, LP (low phosphorus) vs TP and NP (no phosphorus) vs. TP, respectively. In contrast, 1,855, 195, 432, and 120 DEGs exhibited a down-regulated expression pattern between each of them, respectively. Gene annotation in public datasets revealed that the DEGs related to phosphate transporter and alkaloid biosynthesis were enriched in <i>D. officinale</i>. By co-expression analysis, 10 phosphorus transport-related transcription factors (TFs) and 21 TFs associated with dendrobine biosynthesis were mined from the <i>D. officinale</i> transcriptome. These above findings provide many candidate TFs related to dendrobines biosynthesis and new insights into dissecting the potential molecular mechanism on regulating dendrobine biosynthesis under LP stress in <i>D. officinale</i>.