Abstract
ABSTRACTCatharanthus roseus (C. roseus) plants were used to investigate the terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) accumulation under the condition of PEG-induced drought stress. Multivariate analysis showed that 35% PEG6000 could induce more obvious and stable accumulation on proline (PRO) content and the relative water content (RWC). The results indicated that there were gradual increase and then decrease (p < .05) in the contents of vindoline (VIN) and catharanthine (CAT) under 35% PEG6000 stress, but the content of vinblastine (VBL) increased gradually. In addition, the expression levels of tryptophan decarboxylase (TDC), strictosidine synthase (STR) and deacetylvindoline-4-O-acetyltransferase (DAT) were upregulated in plants under 35% PEG6000 stress. Further correlation analysis indicated that CAT accumulation was significantly correlated with TDC gene expression, and VBL accumulation was significantly correlated with peroxidase (p < .05). Our results suggest that the cultivation of C. roseus in drought stress would serve as effective treatment for accumulating TIAs.
Highlights
Catharanthus roseus (C. roseus) is a highly exploited perennial herbaceous flowering medicinal plant for its many valuable terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) (Ganapathi & Kargi 1990) such as anti-cancer bisindole alkaloid vinblastine (VBL) and vincristine (VCR) (Sreevalli et al 2004; Verma et al 2007)
Our results suggest that the cultivation of C. roseus in drought stress would serve as effective treatment for accumulating TIAs
relative water content (RWC) in leaves was decreased under the treatment of PEG6000 at different concentrations, especially, when treated with 35% PEG6000, which caused a sharp decrease in the RWC in the C. roseus leaves (Figure 1(B))
Summary
Catharanthus roseus (C. roseus) is a highly exploited perennial herbaceous flowering medicinal plant for its many valuable terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) (Ganapathi & Kargi 1990) such as anti-cancer bisindole alkaloid vinblastine (VBL) and vincristine (VCR) (Sreevalli et al 2004; Verma et al 2007). Previous studies have demonstrated that osmotic adjustment and compatible solutes’ accumulation are two typical responses for all plants to contribute stress tolerance (Hare et al 1998; Reddy et al 2004). Proline (PRO) accumulation enabled the plant to maintain low water potentials, increasing compatible osmolytes, which could help buffer the immediate effect of water shortages within the organism (Sairam et al 2002; Kumar et al 2003). For the past several years, many efforts to have focused on testing the C. roseus’ drought stress tolerance capacity (Qureshi et al 2005; Cui et al 2016), but little information is obtained about the physiological basis and molecular mechanisms underlying the PRO and POD metabolism under drought stress in C. roseus
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