Fig. 6

DEGs involved in carotenoids biosynthesis pathway of C. moschata. a Heat map showing the expression level (RPKM) of different unigenes from carotenoids biosynthesis, (b) Proposed carotenoids biosynthesis pathway in C. moschata, extracted from literature [33,34,35,36]. Gene expression (Relative expression) shown as heat maps, and time points with dots above them represented the significantly (P < 0.05) differentially expressed between two germplasms (CMO-X and CMO-E). Pathway genes and their abbreviations are as follow; PSY (Unigene0032135): Phytoene synthase, BOH (Unigene0031912): β-carotene hydroxylase, EOH (Unigene0042540): ɛ-carotene hydroxylase, LUT1: β-ring hydroxylase, LCY-E (Unigene0031052): Lycopene-ɛ-cyclase, LCY-B (Unigene0018220): Lycopene-β-cyclase, ZDS (Unigene0035295): ζ-carotene, PDS (Unigene0036921): Phytoene desaturase, ZEP (Unigene0003183): Zeaxanthin epoxidase, VDE (Unigene0053140): Violaxanthin de-epoxidase, CRTISO (Unigene0036596): Carotenoid isomerase and CCD8: Carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase