Abstract
Vitamin E (tocopherol: Toc) is an important lipid-soluble antioxidant synthesized in chloroplasts. Among the 8 isoforms of vitamin E, α-Toc has the highest activity in humans. To generate transgenic plants with enhanced vitamin E activity, we applied a chloroplast transformation technique. Three types of the transplastomic tobacco plants (pTTC, pTTMT and pTTC-TMT) carrying the Toc cyclase (TC) or γ-Toc methyltransferase (γ-TMT) gene and the TC plus γ-TMT genes as an operon in the plastid genome, respectively, were generated. There was a significant increase in total levels of Toc due to an increase in γ-Toc in the pTTC plants. Compared to the wild-type plants, Toc composition was altered in the pTTMT plants. In the pTTC-TMT plants, total Toc levels increased and α-Toc was a major Toc isoform. Furthermore, to use chloroplast transformation to produce α-Toc-rich vegetable, TC-overexpressing transplastomic lettuce plants (pLTC) were generated. Total Toc levels and vitamin E activity increased in the pLTC plants compared with the wild-type lettuce plants. These findings indicated that chloroplast genetic engineering is useful to improve vitamin E quality and quantity in plants.
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Abbreviations
- DMPBQ:
-
2,3-dimethyl-5-phytyl-1,4-benzoquinone
- HGA:
-
Homogentisic acid
- HPT:
-
Homogentisate phytyltransferase
- HPP:
-
p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate
- HPPD:
-
p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase
- MEP:
-
Methylerythritol phosphate
- MPBQ:
-
2-methyl-6-phytylbenzoquinone
- MPBQMT:
-
2-methyl-6-phytylbenzoquinone methyltransferase
- Toc:
-
Tocopherol
- TC:
-
Tocopherol cyclase
- γ-TMT:
-
γ-tocopherol methyltransferase
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by a Grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (A) (S.S.: 22248042) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan, and in part by the Strategic Project to Support the Formation of Research Bases at Private Universities: Matching Fund Subsidy from MEXT, 2011-2015 (S1101035).
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Yukinori Yabuta and Hiroyuki Tanaka contributed equally to this work.
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Yabuta, Y., Tanaka, H., Yoshimura, S. et al. Improvement of vitamin E quality and quantity in tobacco and lettuce by chloroplast genetic engineering. Transgenic Res 22, 391–402 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-012-9656-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-012-9656-5