Abstract
Secondary metabolites are essential for plant survival and reproduction. Wild undomesticated and tropical plants are expected to harbor highly diverse metabolomes. We investigated the metabolomic diversity of two morphologically similar trees of tropical Africa, Erythrophleum suaveolens and E. ivorense, known for particular secondary metabolites named the cassaine-type diterpenoids. To assess how the metabolome varies between and within species, we sampled leaves from individuals of different geographic origins but grown from seeds in a common garden in Cameroon. Metabolites were analyzed using reversed phase LC-HRMS(/MS). Data were interpreted by untargeted metabolomics and molecular networks based on MS/MS data. Multivariate analyses enabled us to cluster samples based on species but also on geographic origins. We identified the structures of 28 cassaine-type diterpenoids among which 19 were new, 10 were largely specific to E. ivorense and five to E. suaveolens. Our results showed that the metabolome allows an unequivocal distinction of morphologically-close species, suggesting the potential of metabolite fingerprinting for these species. Plant geographic origin had a significant influence on relative concentrations of metabolites with variations up to eight (suaveolens) and 30 times (ivorense) between origins of the same species. This shows that the metabolome is strongly influenced by the geographical origin of plants (i.e., genetic factors).
Highlights
As sessile organisms, plants produce thousands of secondary metabolites [1,2,3,4] to cope with various environmental constraints [5]
Knowing the remarkable secondary metabolites composition of Erythrophleum, we investigated whether metabolomics would enable us to discriminate the two Erythrophleum species, the intraspecific genetic groups and/or the geographical origins of trees, using liquid chromatography coupled to a high-resolution tandem mass spectrometer (LC-high-resolution mass spectrometer (HRMS)(/MS))
The high percentage of variance (57%) explained by the first two axes (PC1 + PC2) suggests that hereditary genetic factors predominantly influence the metabolome compared to environmental growth factors as they were cultivated in the same forest concession
Summary
Plants produce thousands of secondary metabolites [1,2,3,4] to cope with various environmental constraints [5]. Plant natural products are produced via numerous specialized enzymes that transform central/primary metabolites into secondary metabolites. The latter provide tremendous resources for human therapies [6]. As metabolites are end products of complex cellular networks of gene expression, protein synthesis and interactions, and are likely under natural selection, they are more accurate measures of the phenotype than transcriptomic or proteomic data alone [10,11,12]
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