Qing Wang

Leaf-trait variation has traditionally been focused on both within and among species along environmental gradients, while leaf age has received less attention. By measuring leaf morphological, stomatal, and stoichiometric traits of 40 coexisting woody species in temperate forest in northern China, we analyzed their variation pattern and the correlations among different plant life forms and leaf age. We found that leaf age has significant effects on leaf functional traits. The young leaves of both shrub and tree species revealed a lower stoma density (SD) and a higher stoma length (SL), stoma width (SW), and leaf N content (LNC) than mature leaves. Shrub species have a higher SLA and SD than tree species for both young and mature leaves. The traits of young leaves generally revealed a higher variation than those of mature leaves. Although correlations between traits are similar between young leaves and mature leaves, the slopes of the SLA–SD and SD–LNC relationships were significantly affected by leaf age. These findings elucidate the adaptive changes of leaf traits during leaf maturation and underscore the trade-off between stomatal safety and efficiency, as well as the trade-off between leaf hydraulic and economic traits in temperate woody species during leaf development. We conclude that variation in leaf traits with age may play a potentially important role in understanding the ecological function of woody species in temperate forests.

Corydalis yanhusuo is a medicinal herb in China that has been widely used to treat various kinds of pain. The tuber is the main organ of C. yanhusuo used for medicinal purposes, but changes in related genes during the development of the tuber have rarely been reported. To identify the differentially expressed genes during tuber development, C. yanhusuo full-length transcriptomic sequencing was performed using single-molecule real-time technology, and tubers at three development stages were selected for comparative transcriptome analysis. A total of 90,496 full-length non-chimeric transcripts were obtained, and 19,341 transcripts were annotated in at least one public database. A total of 9221 differentially expressed genes were identified during the swelling process of C. yanhusuo tuber. A Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis revealed that differentially expressed genes associated with a “starch and sucrose metabolism pathway”, “phenylpropanoid biosynthesis pathway”, “isoquinoline alkaloid biosynthesis pathway”, “zeatin biosynthesis pathway”, and “brassinosteroid biosynthesis pathway” were predominantly enriched. In addition, the genes involved in cell wall metabolism were potentially associated with tuber swelling. These processes regulated and were involved in C. yanhusuo tuber development. The results provide a foundation for further research on tuber formation in medicinal plants.