The intermittent and synchronized production of a large amount of flowers and seeds is called masting or mast seeding. Fagaceae is a family of flowering plants that includes typical masting species such as beech, oak, and tanbark oak. Applying recent advances in molecular and genetic studies about flowering time control to masting species is increasingly useful to unravel the underlying mechanism of masting. To unravel genetic basis of masting dynamics in the Fagacea family, we performed comparative field transcriptomics of three Fagaceae species, Fagus crenata , Quercus glauca, and Lithocarpus edulis, at Ito campus of Kyushu University.

Our transcriptome analyses unraveled the non-intuitive relationship between seasonal environment and expression profiles of genes involved in flowering-time control, nitrogen and sugar transport, and photosynthesis. Although many orthologus genes exhibited conserved expression patterns, there were groups that show distinctly different expression pattern between species. We also identified co-expression patterns that are shared among species and estimated the contribution of lineage-specific gene expression to reproductive phenotypes. Our co-expression analyses and comparison of protein coding sequences provide insights into transcriptome evolution in the context reproductive strategy in trees.