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Overexpression of AtEDT1 promotes root elongation and affects medicinal secondary metabolite biosynthesis in roots of transgenic Salvia miltiorrhiza

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Abstract

Medicinal secondary metabolites (salvianolic acids and tanshinones) are valuable natural bioactive compounds in Salvia miltiorrhiza and have widespread applications. Improvement of medicinal secondary metabolite accumulation through biotechnology is necessary and urgent to satisfy their increasing demand. Herein, it was demonstrated that the overexpression of the transcription factor Arabidopsis thaliana-enhanced drought tolerance 1 (AtEDT1) could affect medicinal secondary metabolite accumulation. In this study, we observed that the transgenic lines significantly conferred drought tolerance phenotype. Meanwhile, we found that the overexpression of AtEDT1 promoted root elongation in S. miltiorrhiza. Interestingly, we also found that the overexpression of AtEDT1 determined the accumulation of salvianolic acids, such as rosmarinic acid, lithospermic acid, salvianolic acid B, and total salvianolic acids due to the induction of the expression levels of salvianolic acid biosynthetic genes. Conversely, S. miltiorrhiza plants overexpressing the AtEDT1 transgene showed a decrease in tanshinone synthesis. Our results demonstrated that the overexpression of AtEDT1 significantly increased the accumulation of salvianolic acids in S. miltiorrhiza. Further studies are required to better elucidate the functional role of AtEDT1 in the regulation of phytochemical compound synthesis.

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Acknowledgements

We express our gratitude to Dr. Chengbin Xiang from the University of Science and Technology of China for providing the vector pCB2006-EDT1. The research was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (ZYGX2014J081) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31271420 and 31371682).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China

    Yu Liu, Geng Sun, Zhaohui Zhong, Linyi Ji, Yong Zhang, Jianping Zhou, Xuelian Zheng & Kejun Deng

  2. Center for Informational Biology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, China

    Yu Liu, Geng Sun, Zhaohui Zhong, Linyi Ji, Yong Zhang, Jianping Zhou, Xuelian Zheng & Kejun Deng

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  1. Yu Liu
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  2. Geng Sun
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  3. Zhaohui Zhong
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  5. Yong Zhang
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Correspondence to Xuelian Zheng or Kejun Deng.

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Fig. S1

Contents of some components in the salvianolic acids and tanshinones biosynthesis pathway in wild type and transgenic lines determined by HPLC. ①rosmarinic acid, ②lithospermic acid, ③salvianolic acid B, ④dihydrotanshinone I, ⑤cryptotanshinone, ⑥tanshinone IIA. (PPTX 10978 kb)

Fig. S2

Biosynthesis of salvianolic acids and tanshinones in S. miltiorrhiza. Solid arrows indicate one step biosynthetic reaction, and dashed arrows indicate multiple-step reactions. E4P, erythose 4-phosphate; PEP, phosphoenolpyruvate; 4-HPPA, 4-Hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid; 4-HPLA, 4-hydroxyphenyllactic acid; G3P, glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate; HMG-CoA, 3-Hydroxy-3-methylglutary l-CoA; MVA, mevalonate; CDP-ME2P, 2-phospho-4-(cytidine 5’-diphospho)-2-C-methyl-D-erythritol; ME-cPP, 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol 2, 4-cyclodiphosphate; IPP, isopentenyl diphosphate; DMAPP, dimethylallyl diphosphate; GGPP, geranylgeranyl diphosphate. (PPTX 8905 kb)

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Liu, Y., Sun, G., Zhong, Z. et al. Overexpression of AtEDT1 promotes root elongation and affects medicinal secondary metabolite biosynthesis in roots of transgenic Salvia miltiorrhiza . Protoplasma 254, 1617–1625 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00709-016-1045-0

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