Anthocyanin accumulation and transcriptional regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis in purple bok choy (Brassica rapa var. chinensis).

Bok choy (Brassica rapa var. chinensis) is an important dietary vegetable cultivated and consumed worldwide for its edible leaves. The purple cultivars rich in health-promoting anthocyanins are usually more eye-catching and valuable. Fifteen kinds of anthocyanins were separated and identified from a purple bok choy cultivar (Zi He) by high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry. To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying anthocyanin accumulation in bok choy, the expression profiles of anthocyanin biosynthetic and regulatory genes were analyzed in seedlings and leaves of the purple cultivar and the green cultivar (Su Zhouqing). Compared with the other tissues, BrTT8 and most of the anthocyanin biosynthetic genes were significantly up-regulated in the leaves and light-grown seedlings of Zi He. The results that heterologous expression of BrTT8 promotes the transcription of partial anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in regeneration shoots of tomato indicate that BrTT8 plays an important role in the regulation of anthocyanin biosynthesis.