Abstract
Plant latex is sequestered in laticiferous structures and exuded immediately from damaged plant tissues. The primary function of plant latex is related to defense responses to their natural enemies. Euphorbia jolkinii Boiss. is a perennial herbaceous plant that greatly threaten the biodiversity and ecological integrity of northwest Yunnan, China. Nine triterpenes (1–9), four non-protein amino acids (10–13) and three glycosides (14–16) including a new isopentenyl disaccharide (14), were isolated and identified from the latex of E. jolkinii. Their structures were established on the basis of comprehensive spectroscopic data analyses. Bioassay revealed that meta-tyrosine (10) showed significant phytotoxic activity, inhibiting root and shoot growth of Zea mays, Medicago sativa, Brassica campestris, and Arabidopsis thaliana, with EC50 values ranging from 4.41 ± 1.08 to 37.60 ± 3.59 µg/mL. Interestingly, meta-tyrosine inhibited the root growth of Oryza sativa, but promoted their shoot growth at the concentrations below 20 µg/mL. meta-Tyrosine was found to be the predominant constituent in polar part of the latex extract from both stems and roots of E. jolkinii, but undetectable in the rhizosphere soil. In addition, some triterpenes showed antibacterial and nematicidal effects. The results suggested that meta-tyrosine and triterpenes in the latex might function as defensive substances for E. jolkinii against other organisms.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the members of the analytical center of Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for measurements of the NMR, MS, IR, UV, and CD spectral data.
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This research was supported financially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31900299 and 32000273).
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All authors made contributions to the experiment and manuscript. SLi, SLuo and YL conceived the research and designed the experiments. SLuo, CH, JH, SJ, LT and TT performed the experiments. SLuo wrote the main manuscript and prepared figures and tables. SLi and YL revised the manuscript.
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ESM 1
NMR data of compounds 1–13, 15, and 16. 1D and 2D NMR spectra of compound 14. CD spectra of compounds 10–13. The effects of shoots growth of Oryza sativa on the treatment with meta-tyrosine (10). (DOCX 20.0 MB)
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Luo, S., Huang, C., Hua, J. et al. Defensive Specialized Metabolites from the Latex of Euphorbia jolkinii. J Chem Ecol 49, 287–298 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-023-01413-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-023-01413-6