Abstract
BackgroundThe medicinal plant, Catharanthus roseus (C. roseus), accumulates a wide range of terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs). Ethylene (ET) and methyl-jasmonate (MeJA) were previously reported as effective elicitors for the production of various valuable secondary metabolites of C. roseus, while a few ET or MeJA induced transcriptomic research is yet reported on this species. In this study, the de-novo transcriptome assembly of C. roseus is performed by using the next-generation sequencing technology.ResultsThe result shows that phenolic biosynthesis genes respond specifically to ET in leaves, monoterpenoid biosynthesis genes respond specifically to MeJA in roots. By screening the database, 23 ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter partial sequences are identified in C. roseus. On this basis, more than 80 key genes that encode key enzymes (namely TIA pathway, transcriptional factor (TF) and candidate ABC transporter) of alkaloid synthesis in TIA biosynthetic pathways are chosen to explore the integrative responses to ET and MeJA at the transcriptional level. Our data indicated that TIA accumulation is strictly regulated by the TF ethylene responsive factor (ERF) and bHLH iridoid synthesis 1 (BIS1). The heatmap, combined with principal component analysis (PCA) of C. roseus, shows that ERF co-expression with ABC2 and ABC8 specific expression in roots affect the root-specific accumulation of vinblastine in C. roseus. On the contrast, BIS1 activities follow a similar pattern of ABC3 and CrTPT2 specific expression in leaves, which affects the leaf-specific accumulation of vindoline in C. roseus.ConclusionsResults presented above illustrate that ethylene has a stronger effect than MeJA on TIA induction at both transcriptional and metabolite level. Furthermore, meta-analysis reveals that ERF and BIS1 form a positive feedback loop connecting two ABC transporters respectively and are actively involved in TIAs responding to ET and MeJA in C. roseus.
Highlights
The medicinal plant, Catharanthus roseus (C. roseus), accumulates a wide range of terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs)
In the present study, we utilized deep transcriptomics combined with metabolic profiling by Liquid chromatograph-mass spectrometer (LC-MS) to illustrate the linkage between the expression of genes (TFs and candidate ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters) and regulation of TIA accumulation under the influence of ET and MeJA
Results showed that ET has a stronger effect on induction of TIAs synthesis at both transcriptional and metabolite level
Summary
The medicinal plant, Catharanthus roseus (C. roseus), accumulates a wide range of terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs). Alkaloids are diverse groups of low-molecular-weight nitrogen-containing compounds found in about 20% of plant species and approximate 12,000 alkaloids have been elucidated for their chemical structures [1]. Due to their strong and divergent biological activities, many alkaloids. Many transcriptomic types of research over C. roseus were carried out, which dramatically boosted the discovery of TIAs biosynthesis genes and pathway elucidation [2, 11, 14, 16]. In 2015, Kellner et al generated a genome assembly for C.roseus that greatly promoted the discovery of monoterpenoid indole alkaloid (MIA) biosynthesis and identified many putative missing pathway genes, transcription factors (TFs) and intermediates transporters [17]
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