Abstract
Drought stress triggers a series of physiological and biochemical changes in tea plants. It is well known that flavonoids, lignin and long-chain fatty acids play important roles in drought resistance. However, changes in proteins related to these three metabolic pathways in tea plants under drought stress have not been reported. We analysed the proteomic profiles of tea plants by tandem mass tag and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. A total of 4789 proteins were identified, of which 11 and 100 showed up- and downregulation, respectively. The proteins related to the biosynthesis of lignin, flavonoids and long-chain fatty acids, including phenylalanine ammonia lyase, cinnamoyl-CoA reductase, peroxidase, chalcone synthase, flavanone 3-hydroxylase, flavonol synthase, acetyl-CoA carboxylase 1,3-ketoacyl-CoA synthase 6 and 3-ketoacyl-CoA reductase 1, were downregulated. However, the contents of soluble proteins, malondialdehyde, total phenols, lignin and flavonoids in the tea plants increased. These results showed that tea plants might improve drought resistance by inhibiting the accumulation of synthases related to lignin, flavonoids and long-chain fatty acids. The proteomic spectrum of tea plants provides a scientific basis for studying the pathways related to lignin, flavonoid and long-chain fatty acid metabolism in response to drought stress.
Highlights
Drought stress triggers a series of physiological and biochemical changes in tea plants
To analyse the physiological and biochemical responses to drought, we analysed the contents of soluble proteins (Cpr), MDA, total phenols (TP), flavonoids, and lignin and the activity of phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) in tea plants under drought stress from 0 to 96 h (Fig. 1) (Table 1)
These results showed that drought stress caused damage to tea plants and induced the synthesis of flavonoids and lignin
Summary
Drought stress triggers a series of physiological and biochemical changes in tea plants. The contents of soluble proteins, malondialdehyde, total phenols, lignin and flavonoids in the tea plants increased These results showed that tea plants might improve drought resistance by inhibiting the accumulation of synthases related to lignin, flavonoids and long-chain fatty acids. The proteomic spectrum of tea plants provides a scientific basis for studying the pathways related to lignin, flavonoid and long-chain fatty acid metabolism in response to drought stress. We used a bioinformatics method to analyse the Gene Ontology (GO) terms, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways and protein–protein interactions (PPIs) These results provide insights into the complex molecular mechanisms associated with lignin, flavonoid and fatty acid biosynthesis in tea plants under drought stress and provide an important basis for improving the quality of tea plants under drought conditions
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