SmBICs Inhibit Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.)

Eggplant is rich in anthocyanins, which are thought to be highly beneficial for human health. It has been reported that blue light inhibitors of cryptochromes (BICs) act as negative regulators in light signal transduction, but little is known about their role in anthocyanin biosynthesis. In this study, yeast one-hybrid analysis showed that SmBICs could bind to the promoter of SmCHS, indicating that they could directly participate in eggplant anthocyanin biosynthesis. In SmBICs-silenced eggplants, more anthocyanins were accumulated, while SmBIC1-overexpression (OE) and SmBIC2-OE Arabidopsis and eggplants synthesized less anthocyanin. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction also revealed that the anthocyanin structural genes, which were downregulated in SmBIC1-OE and SmBIC2-OE lines, were upregulated in SmBICs-silenced eggplants. In addition, transcriptome analysis further confirmed that differentially expressed genes of SmBICs-OE plants were enriched mainly in the pathways related to anthocyanin biosynthesis and the key transcription factors and structural genes for anthocyanin biosynthesis, such as SmMYB1, SmTT8, SmHY5, SmCHS, SmCHI, SmDFR and SmANS, were suppressed significantly. Finally, bimolecular fluorescence complementation and blue-light-dependent degradation assay suggested that SmBICs interacted with photo-excited SmCRY2 to inhibit its photoreaction, thereby inhibiting the expression of genes related to anthocyanin biosynthesis and reducing anthocyanin accumulation. Collectively, our study suggests that SmBICs repress anthocyanin biosynthesis by inhibiting photoactivation of SmCRY2. This study provides a new working model for anthocyanin biosynthesis in eggplant.