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Methionine and S-methylmethionine exhibit temporal and spatial accumulation patterns during the Arabidopsis life cycle

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Abstract

Methionine is a nutritionally essential sulfur-containing amino acid found at low levels in plant tissues. Yet, the factors that regulate its synthesis and accumulation in seeds are not fully known. Recent genetic studies demonstrate that Arabidopsis seeds are able to synthesize methionine de novo through the aspartate family pathway similarly to vegetative tissues; however, additional biochemical studies suggest that the S-methylmethionine (SMM) cycle also plays a major role in methionine synthesis in seeds. To better understand the contribution of these two pathways to methionine synthesis, we have sampled various vegetative and reproductive tissues during the Arabidopsis life cycle and determined the contents of soluble and protein-incorporated methionine, SMM, as well as the expression levels of the key genes involved in these two pathways. Our results strengthen the hypothesis that SMM that is produced in the rosette leaves from methionine contributes to methionine accumulation in seeds. However, the SMM cycle may have additional functions in plant tissues since its key genes were expressed in all of the examined tissues, although at different rates. The accumulation patterns of soluble and protein-incorporated methionine during the Arabidopsis life cycle were found to be similar to most of the other amino acids, especially to those belonging to the branched-chain and aromatic amino acids that are produced in chloroplasts together with methionine. This indicates that similar factors regulate the levels of amino acids during development.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Gidi Baum for his critical reading and valuable comments. This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 231-09).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Plant Science, Migal, Galilee Research Institute Ltd., P.O.B. 831, 11016, Kiryat Shmona, Israel

    Alon Frank, Hagai Cohen, Dotan Hoffman & Rachel Amir

  2. Faculty of Biology, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, 32000, Haifa, Israel

    Hagai Cohen

  3. Tel-Hai College, Upper Galilee, 11016, Israel

    Alon Frank, Dotan Hoffman & Rachel Amir

Authors
  1. Alon Frank
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  2. Hagai Cohen
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  3. Dotan Hoffman
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  4. Rachel Amir
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachel Amir.

Additional information

A. Frank and H. Cohen contributed equally to this study.

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Frank, A., Cohen, H., Hoffman, D. et al. Methionine and S-methylmethionine exhibit temporal and spatial accumulation patterns during the Arabidopsis life cycle. Amino Acids 47, 497–510 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-014-1881-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-014-1881-1

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