Fig 1.
Microscopic observation of the transformation of U. prolifera from the vegetative state to the reproductive state after cutting.
Left: uncut(control); right: cut (treatment) 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 96, and 120 h. For 48 h of treatment: a, b, c, d, represent vegetative cell, mature germ cell sac, released germ cell sac, and released gametophytes/sporophytes respectively, for 120h of treatment: e represents germinated seedling, the scale bars represent 20 μm.
Table 1.
Transformation of U. prolifera from vegetative cells into germ cell sac and their release rate.
Fig 2.
PCA of U. prolifera during its fragmentation-induced proliferation.
The green, dark-blue, brown, pale-yellow, pale-blue, purple, gray and black colors represent treatment the 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 96, and 120 h treatments respectively, and boxes (□) and circles (○) represents the control and treatment groups, respectively; n = 6.
Fig 3.
Heatmap analysis, combined with a hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), of the metabolites in U. prolifera fragmentation-induced proliferation (treatment and control groups) during the 12–120 h period (n = 6).
In the first line “L” represents light and “D” represents dark; In the second/time line colors represent different time; in the third/treatment line, the color pink represents the “control group” and green represents the “treatment group”.
Fig 4.
Two-way repeated measures (within subjects) ANOVA of metabolites in U. prolifera fragmentation-induced proliferation during 12–120 h.
Pink, purple, and green circles respect time, treatment, and their interaction, respectively; the figures in the circles represent the kinds of metabolites that responded to the element. The following parameters were chosen: ANOVA type, “Type ǀ”; Consider interactions, “Yes”; Adjusted p-value cutoff, 0.05; Multiple testing correction, false discovery rate.
Fig 5.
ANOVA-simultaneous component analysis (ASCA) of U. prolifera during fragmentation-induced proliferation.
(a-c) Major pattern associated with time, treatment and their interaction; (d-f) ASCA selection of important variables (metabolites) associated with time, treatment and their interaction by leverage/SPE analysis. The list of well-modeled metabolites refer to Table 2.
Table 2.
Metabolites of U. prolifera which met the following criteria: potential biomarker according OPLS-DA, well-modeled by SPE and with Hotelling’s T2 value > 100.
Fig 6.
OPLS-DA of the treatment (cut) and control (uncut) groups of U. prolifera at different time points.
UV scaling was selected; ■ and● represent the treatment(cut) and control (uncut) groups, respectively.
Table 3.
Metabolic difference between cut and uncut groups of U. prolifera at each time point.
Fig 7.
MEBA of U. prolifera metabolites that met the following criteria: potential biomarkers according OPLS-DA, well-modeled by SPE and with Hotelling’s T2 value > 100.