Assessing Specialized Metabolite Diversity in the Cosmopolitan Plant Genus Euphorbia L.

In this study, the co-culture of Nigrospora oryzae and Beauveria bassiana, the endophytes in the seeds of Dendrobium officinale, were examined for metabolite diversity. Five new azaphilones were isolated, and their structures were determined by spectral analysis. In terms of azaphilones, compound 2 had an unprecedented skeleton, with a bicyclic oxygen bridge. The antifungal selectivities of the metabolite produced by N. oryzae against its co-culture fungus, B. bassiana, and common pathogens exhibited competitive interaction in this mix-culture. Compounds 1 and 2 showed obvious nitric oxide (NO) inhibitory activity with ratios of 37%, and 39%, respectively, at a concentration of 50 μM.

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Discovering variation of secondary metabolite diversity and its relationship with disease resistance in Cornus florida L.

Ecology and Evolution ◽

10.1002/ece3.4090 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (11) ◽

pp. 5619-5636 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Andrew L. Pais ◽

Xu Li ◽

Qiu-Yun Jenny Xiang

Keyword(s):

Disease Resistance ◽

Secondary Metabolite ◽

Cornus Florida ◽

Secondary Metabolite Diversity ◽

Metabolite Diversity

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Illuminating a plant’s tissue-specific metabolic diversity using computational metabolomics and information theory

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1610218113 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 113 (47) ◽

pp. E7610-E7618 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Author(s):

Dapeng Li ◽

Sven Heiling ◽

Ian T. Baldwin ◽

Emmanuel Gaquerel

Keyword(s):

Information Theory ◽

Secondary Metabolism ◽

Gene Function ◽

Tissue Level ◽

Two Dimensions ◽

Molecular Networks ◽

Specific Gene ◽

Theory Analysis ◽

Tissue Specific ◽

Metabolite Diversity

Secondary metabolite diversity is considered an important fitness determinant for plants’ biotic and abiotic interactions in nature. This diversity can be examined in two dimensions. The first one considers metabolite diversity across plant species. A second way of looking at this diversity is by considering the tissue-specific localization of pathways underlying secondary metabolism within a plant. Although these cross-tissue metabolite variations are increasingly regarded as important readouts of tissue-level gene function and regulatory processes, they have rarely been comprehensively explored by nontargeted metabolomics. As such, important questions have remained superficially addressed. For instance, which tissues exhibit prevalent signatures of metabolic specialization? Reciprocally, which metabolites contribute most to this tissue specialization in contrast to those metabolites exhibiting housekeeping characteristics? Here, we explore tissue-level metabolic specialization in Nicotiana attenuata, an ecological model with rich secondary metabolism, by combining tissue-wide nontargeted mass spectral data acquisition, information theory analysis, and tandem MS (MS/MS) molecular networks. This analysis was conducted for two different methanolic extracts of 14 tissues and deconvoluted 895 nonredundant MS/MS spectra. Using information theory analysis, anthers were found to harbor the most specialized metabolome, and most unique metabolites of anthers and other tissues were annotated through MS/MS molecular networks. Tissue–metabolite association maps were used to predict tissue-specific gene functions. Predictions for the function of two UDP-glycosyltransferases in flavonoid metabolism were confirmed by virus-induced gene silencing. The present workflow allows biologists to amortize the vast amount of data produced by modern MS instrumentation in their quest to understand gene function.

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