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Differential regulation of fluorescent alkaloid metabolism between idioblast and lacticifer cells during leaf development in Catharanthus roseus seedlings

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Abstract

Bioactive specialized (secondary) metabolites are indispensable for plant development or adjustment to their surrounding environment. In many plants, these specialized metabolites are accumulated in specifically differentiated cells. Catharanthus roseus is a well-known medicinal plant known for producing many kinds of monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs). C. roseus has two types of specifically differentiated cells accumulating MIAs, so-called idioblast cells and laticifer cells. In this study, we compared each of the cells as they changed during seedling growth, and found that the fluorescent metabolites accumulated in these cells were differentially regulated. Analysis of fluorescent compounds revealed that the fluorescence observed in these cells was emitted from the compound serpentine. Further, we found that the serpentine content of leaves increased as leaves grew. Our findings suggest that idioblast cells and laticifer cells have different biological roles in MIA biosynthesis and its regulation.

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  • 12 March 2022

    Masami Yokota Hirai's ORCID number was missing and included in this version.

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Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate Dr. Ryosuke Munakata (Kyoto University, Japan) and Dr. Shuichi Sakaguchi (Nara women’s University, Japan) for detailed discussion, MSc. Ryoko Kusakabe (Kobe University, Japan), Prof. Masaaki Miyamoto (Kobe University, Japan), Mr. Muneo Sato (RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science), Dr. Aya Anegawa (Agilent Technology Japan), MSc. Delia Ayled Serna Guerrero (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology) and Dr. Maritta Kunert (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology) for the support with MS measurement, MSc. Ayuko Kuwahara (RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science) for the support for experiments, Greenhouse staff (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology), particularly Ms. Eva Rothe for the support on preparing many cultivars of C. roseus plants, Dr. Sarah O’Connor (Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology) for supporting experiments, and Prof. Hiroshi Matsufuji (Nihon University, Japan) for the support with fluorescent measurement. We also would like to offer our special thanks to Prof. Rob Reid (University of Adelaide, Australia) for his kind discussion and correction of this manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research of Innovative Areas from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sports, Culture, Science, and Technology on ‘‘Perceptive plants (22120006)’’ and “Plant-structure-opt (18H05493)”, and JSPS KAKENHI grant Number 16H04807 to TM. This work was also supported by RIKEN Junior Research Associate Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, Kobe, Japan

    Mai Uzaki, Kotaro Yamamoto, Akio Murakami, Miwa Ohnishi, Kimitsune Ishizaki, Hidehiro Fukaki & Tetsuro Mimura

  2. Department of Applied Biosciences, Graduate School of Bioagricultural Science, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Mai Uzaki & Masami Yokota Hirai

  3. RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, 1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama, Japan

    Mai Uzaki, Yushiro Fuji & Masami Yokota Hirai

  4. Department of Natural Product Biosynthesis, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany

    Kotaro Yamamoto

  5. Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan

    Kotaro Yamamoto

  6. Department of Botany, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Miwa Ohnishi

  7. College of Bioscience and Biotechnology, National Cheng-Kung University, No.1, University Road, 701, Tainan City, Taiwan

    Tetsuro Mimura

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  1. Mai Uzaki
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Uzaki, M., Yamamoto, K., Murakami, A. et al. Differential regulation of fluorescent alkaloid metabolism between idioblast and lacticifer cells during leaf development in Catharanthus roseus seedlings. J Plant Res 135, 473–483 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10265-022-01380-1

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