Fig. 7

Expression profiles of carotenoid biosynthetic genes in leaves and seeds among three independent transgenic plants for each OsDXS2 and OsDXR construct relative to non-transgenic (NT) and stPAC plants. In the 10-day-old leaves, the expression patterns of 11 rice genes, including five that are involved in the MEP pathway and six carotene biosynthetic genes (a) and 10 rice xanthophyll biosynthetic genes (b) are presented as the fold-change values (2^−ΔΔCt) compared to the ΔCt values of NT, and the qRT-PCR data are listed in Additional file 4: Table S4. Statistical analyses of expression levels were performed using a two-tailed Student’s t-test (*p < 0.05 and ** p < 0.01). The t-test results are represented as an orange color (*) and a green color (*) for the significant effects of OsDXS2 and OsDXR enhancements, respectively. Also, the expression patterns of the same gene sets were analyzed in the mature seeds 40 days after flowering (DAF). The expression data of 11 rice genes, including five that are involved in the MEP pathway and six carotene biosynthetic genes (c) and 10 rice xanthophyll biosynthetic genes (d) are presented as the fold-change values (2^-ΔΔCt) compared to the ΔCt values of NT, and all qRT-PCR data are listed in Additional file 4: Table S5–S6. The ΔCt values of NT are listed in the gray colored boxes, and all fold-change values (2^-ΔΔCt) are presented with the corresponding heatmap graphs. The color key of the heatmap graph is presented under each graph, and the accession numbers of genes and primer sequences are listed in Additional file 4: Table S8