# Multi-Omics Analysis Reveals the Adaptive Responses of Lycoris aurea to Arid Stress

## TL;DR

This study explores how the plant Lycoris aurea adapts to drought by analyzing soil, genes, and metabolites, revealing key strategies for surviving low water conditions.

## Contribution

The study provides a field-based, multi-omics analysis of drought adaptation in Lycoris aurea, identifying specific molecular and metabolic responses to low soil moisture.

## Key findings

- Lycoris aurea adapts to drought through amino acid metabolism, cell wall reinforcement, and cuticle formation.
- Transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses revealed 1034 differentially expressed genes and 1867 metabolites linked to drought responses.
- Key pathways like 'alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism' and 'cutin, suberine and wax biosynthesis' are central to drought adaptation.

## Abstract

Drought is an increasing threat to plant survival, especially for non-model species growing under natural field conditions. In this study, we investigated how the bulbous plant Lycoris aurea responds to low soil moisture by integrating soil measurements with transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses. We found that changes in soil water availability, rather than nutrient levels, were closely associated with coordinated shifts in gene expression and metabolite profiles. These changes were mainly linked to amino acid metabolism, cell wall and cuticle reinforcement, and metabolic adjustments that support stress endurance. Our results suggest that L. aurea relies on coordinated molecular and metabolic strategies, centered on its bulb-based life history, to cope with water limitation. This work provides a field-based, multi-omics perspective on drought adaptation in a medicinal geophyte and offers a useful foundation for future physiological and functional studies.

Understanding how plants respond to water limitation is increasingly important under accelerating climate change. Lycoris aurea, a widely distributed ornamental and medicinal bulbous plant, frequently inhabits environments with fluctuating soil moisture, yet its molecular drought-response mechanisms remain largely unexplored. In this study, we investigated L. aurea growing under field-based, in situ soil moisture regimes, comparing low (~20% soil water content) and high (~40% soil water content) conditions. We combined soil property assessments with high-resolution transcriptomic and untargeted metabolomic profiling to characterize the adaptive responses of bulb tissues under contrasting soil water conditions. Although total nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels were comparable across treatments, soil moisture, representing the primary contrasting field condition, and soil pH, a correlated environmental factor, were significantly associated with variation in gene expression and metabolite accumulation (p < 0.05, n = 3). Transcriptome analyses identified a total of 1034 differentially expressed genes enriched in pathways related to amino acid metabolism, cuticle formation, cell wall modification, and osmotic adjustment. Metabolomic analysis identified a total of 1867 differentially expressed metabolites belonging to carboxylic acids and prenol lipids, showing alterations involved in amino acids, lipids, phenolic acids, and alkaloids associated with osmoprotection, membrane stabilization, and structural reinforcement under low soil moisture. Pathway-based integration analysis highlighted four core pathways, including “alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism” (p = 0.00371) and “cutin, suberine and wax biosynthesis” (p = 0.00873), as central hubs linking transcriptional regulation with metabolic reconfiguration. Gene-metabolite-soil correlation networks further demonstrated that drought adaptation arises from tightly coordinated biochemical and structural adjustments rather than shifts in nutrient acquisition. Together, this species-specific study provides a comprehensive multi-omics framework for understanding drought tolerance in L. aurea, reveals key molecular targets associated with plant resilience, and offers potential targets and insights for the conservation of drought-resilient Lycoris cultivars.