A transcriptomic perspective on the effect of UV irradiation on vitamin C content in pea sprouts

Abstract

Pea sprouts are derived from sprouted peas and are popular for their high vitamin C and flavonoid content, as well as their rapid growth and ease of production. Enhancing its nutritional value with simple treatments is worth exploring, In the present study, we applied supplemental UV irradiation to pea sprouts and examined various components such as vitamin C and flavonoid substances in the treated pea sprouts. Meanwhile, to investigate the mechanism of action of UV irradiation on pea sprouts, we performed high-throughput RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) analysis to probe the genome-wide expression profile of pea sprouts under UV irradiation, generating 41.90 Gb of Clean Data, the results were also validated by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR), and the raw data of sequencing were submitted to the SRA repository. Further transcriptome analysis showed that UV irradiation significantly affected the expression of genes in metabolic pathways, especially those of some key enzymes that affect substance metabolism.