Integrative Hormone Metabolomic, Transcriptomic, and miRNA Sequencing Analyses Reveal Brassinosteroid-Mediated Sex Differentiation in Walnut Flower Buds
Xia Luo, Haochang Zhao, Jiyan Tang, Zhihua Guo, Xiaoyan Lu, Jianxin Niu, Shaowen Quan · 2026
Read Integrative Hormone Metabolomic, Transcriptomic, and miRNA Sequencing Analyses Reveal Brassinosteroid-Mediated Sex Differentiation in Walnut Flower Buds by Xia Luo, Haochang Zhao, Jiyan Tang, Zhihua Guo, Xiaoyan Lu, Jianxin Niu, Shaowen Quan (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13467818.txt.
Description
Xia Luo and co-authors study in 2026 how a plant hormone spray shifts the balance of female and male flowers on walnut trees. Walnuts bear both sexes on one tree but make far more male flowers, which limits nut set. Spraying brassinolide, a brassinosteroid hormone, during the key differentiation window from late April to mid May raised the female-to-male bud ratio across three straight years.
The team combined hormone profiling, gene activity sequencing, and small-RNA analysis to see how the spray works. It changed ethylene and auxin levels differently in female and male buds and switched a set of flower-identity genes in sex-specific ways. One small RNA, miR156g, was confirmed to directly target a gene called JrSPL5, with the two showing opposite activity patterns. The findings sketch the wiring that decides walnut flower sex, knowledge orchard science can use to push yields.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Xia Luo, Haochang Zhao, Jiyan Tang, Zhihua Guo, Xiaoyan Lu, Jianxin Niu, Shaowen Quan |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 41 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |