Fig. 3

Expression behavior of phenylpropanoid and anthocyanin related genes in color reverted somatic variants. a Expression heatmap for early and late phenylpropanoid pathway genes. Genes with significant expression differences between the color reverting and the white-skinned cultivar (as reference) are shown with ‘+’ and ‘-’ symbols representing up and down-regulation, respectively (FDR < 0.05). Purple dots next to gene names represent those with proven roles in anthocyanin synthesis. The anthocyanin-specific repressor MYBC2-L1 (subgroup 4) is highlighted with a black dot. Negative and positive Z-scored FPKM values represent low and highly expressed genes, respectively, while values around zero correspond to mild expression levels. Average linkage clustering and Pearson distance measurement methods were used for clusterization. NA = not assigned value due to very low expression. Gene descriptions, together with their FPKM values can be found in Additional file 6. b qPCR validation of selected genes (c) qPCR expression analysis of selected genes: MYBA1, its target UFGT and the flavonoid hydroxylases F3’H (VIT_17s0000g07210) and F3’5’H (VIT_06s0009g02840). One, two and three asterisks represent significant differences of p < 0.1, p < 0.05 and p < 0.01, respectively in the red to white variant comparisons independently on each developmental stage (unpaired t-test, two-tailed)