Abstract
Tithonia diversifolia is an invasive weed commonly found in tropical ecosystems. In this work, we investigate the influence of different abiotic environmental factors on the plant’s metabolite profile by multivariate statistical analyses of spectral data deduced by UHPLC-DAD-ESI-HRMS and NMR methods. Different plant part samples of T. diversifolia which included leaves, stems, roots, and inflorescences were collected from two Brazilian states throughout a 24-month period, along with the corresponding monthly environmental data. A metabolomic approach employing concatenated LC-MS and NMR data was utilised for the first time to study the relationships between environment and plant metabolism. A seasonal pattern was observed for the occurrence of metabolites that included sugars, sesquiterpenes lactones and phenolics in the leaf and stem parts, which can be correlated to the amount of rainfall and changes in temperature. The distribution of the metabolites in the inflorescence and root parts were mainly affected by variation of some soil nutrients such as Ca, Mg, P, K and Cu. We highlight the environment-metabolism relationship for T. diversifolia and the combined analytical approach to obtain reliable data that contributed to a holistic understanding of the influence of abiotic environmental factors on the production of metabolites in various plant parts.
Highlights
Growing under different environmental conditions, or changes in metabolite production of individuals within the same population at different seasons[18,19,20,21]
Metabolomic profiling was focused on a set of compounds that correspond to the main classes of secondary metabolites encountered in T. diversifolia, sesquiterpene lactones and phenolics, which are related to the most relevant biological properties presented by this species; in addition, primary metabolites compose the set of analysed compounds
It is possible to predict and hypothesize the chemical features of T. diversifolia in rationale with changes in environmental factors by taking into account the variations in metabolic profile perceived through the occurrence of major metabolites in various plant parts
Summary
Growing under different environmental conditions, or changes in metabolite production of individuals within the same population at different seasons[18,19,20,21]. Considering the ecological adaptability features of T. diversifolia as an invasive weed, this species was proven as an adequate object of study to establish an experimental model for environmental metabolomics of plants through a new concatenated approach combining UHPLC-DAD-(ESI)-HRMS and NMR spectral data. The new concatenated approach was an efficient method in directly matching the mass to ratio data with the structure of the respective compounds which can only be specified from the NMR datasets that expedites the dereplication step This approach was used for the first time to carry out a comparative study of different plant part samples of specimens obtained from two environmentally diverse regions of Brazil and collected at different seasons throughout a 24-month period. A regular future harvest of such invasive weeds for bioprospecting purposes will maintain ecological balance of the natural home species
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