Growth, Stoichiometry, and Palatability of Suaeda salsa From Different Habitats Are Demonstrated by Differentially Expressed Proteins and Their Enriched Pathways

Abstract

Suaeda salsa (L.) Pall., a medicinal and edible plant, has green and red-violet ecotypes that exhibit different phenotypes, tastes, and growth characteristics. However, few studies have focused on these differences from the aspect of differentially expressed proteins under the conditions of different habitats in the field. In this study, two ecotypes of S. salsa from the intertidal (control) and supratidal (treatment) habitats of the Yellow River Delta were selected. A total of 30 individual leaves were mixed into six samples (three biological replicates for each) and subjected to protein extraction by using tandem mass tag-labeled quantitative proteomic technology. A total of 4771 proteins were quantitated. They included 317 differentially expressed proteins (2.0-fold change, p < 0.05), among which 143 were upregulated and the remaining 174 were downregulated. These differentially expressed proteins mainly participated in biological processes, such as response to stimulus, stress, and biotic stimulus; in molecular functions, such as methyltransferase activity, transferase activity, one-C group transfer, and tetrapyrrole binding; and in cell components, such as non-membrane-bound organelles, intracellular non-membrane-bound organelles, chromosomes, and photosystems. The differentially expressed proteins were mainly enriched in eight pathways, among which the ribosome, phenylpropanoid biosynthesis, and photosynthesis pathways had higher protein numbers than the other pathways. The upregulation of differentially expressed proteins related to the ribosome and photosynthesis increased the relative growth rate and reduced the N:P ratio of S. salsa from the supratidal habitat, thereby improving its palatability. By contrast, most of the differentially expressed proteins involved in phenylpropanoid biosynthesis were downregulated in S. salsa from the intertidal habitat. This result indicated that S. salsa from the intertidal habitat might accumulate flavonoids, lignin, and other secondary metabolites in its leaves that confer a bitter taste. However, these secondary metabolites might increase the medicinal value of S. salsa from the intertidal habitat. This work could provide a theoretical basis and data support for the sustainable and high-value utilization of medicinal and edible plants from coastal wetlands.

Effect of temperature on betacyanins synthesis and the transcriptome of Suaeda salsa

“…Therefore, we predict that betacyanin accumulation is comprehensively affected by processes such as "phenylpropane metabolism" and "flavonoid biosynthesis," which overall improve the stress resistance and antioxidant level of S. salsa. This is basically consistent with the research results of Song et al Red-violet phenotype of S. salsa in the intertidal habitat have higher differential proteins involved in defense, stimulation, and stress response than those green phenotype of S. salsa in the supratidal habitat, which promoted the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoids and other secondary metabolites, further increased the medicinal value and resisted environmental stresses ability, but directly reduced the palatability of S. salsa (Song et al, 2021). S. salsa is not only one of the best nature-based restoration solution for shoreline stabilization, but also the important biological barrier of coastal wetlands (He et al, 2022).…”

Integration of high-throughput omics technologies in medicinal plant research: The new era of natural drug discovery

“…Divergence of pharmacodynamic components in different species/varieties/strains ( Qin et al., 2014 ; Song et al., 2021 ), tissues ( Guo et al., 2022 ; Pan et al., 2022 ) and development stages ( Huang et al., 2021 ; Zhang et al., 2022b ) of medicinal plants implicates expression level of key proteins involved in biosynthesis and metabolism of medicinal compounds ( Figure 3 , yellow part). Based on quantitatively targeted subproteomic analysis of the high and low artemisinin content of sweet wormwood ( Artemisia annua ), the increase expression of DBR2 accounts for the high artemisinin content ( Chen et al., 2020 ).…”

Potential Therapeutic Mechanism of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi against Ankylosing Spondylitis Based on a Comprehensive Pharmacological Model

“…GO functional annotation was applied to annotate mechanisms associated with the targets with respect to biological process (BP), cellular components (CC), and molecular function (MF) [17] and analyze the top 10 entries in each section. Additionally, KEGG enrichment analysis was used to annotate the target-related pathways [18] and select the top 20 items to harvest the primary pathways of SBG In the volcano plots, red indicates upregulated genes, blue refers to downregulated genes, and gray stands for normal genes. In the heat maps, upregulated genes are displayed in red and downregulated genes in blue.…”