Gene expression analysis
Total RNA was extracted from tea leaves using Trizol reagent (Invitrogen). Purified RNA (1 μg) was subsequently reverse transcribed using a first-strand cDNA synthesis kit to generate cDNA. ABI7900HT Sequence Detection System (Applied Biosystems, CA, USA) was used to measure the gene expression levels. The determined gene expression levels in tea plants were normalized to GAPDH (TEA003029.1) and in Arabidopsis were normalized to UBQ10 (At4g05320). Primers sequence required for gene expression are listed in Table S1.