Insights into Lignan Composition and Biosynthesis in Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica L.)

Abstract

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica L.) has been used as herbal medicine to treat various ailments since ancient times. The biological activity of nettle is chiefly attributed to a large group of phenylpropanoid dimers, namely lignans. Despite the pharmacological importance of nettle lignans, there are no studies addressing lignan biosynthesis in this plant. We herein identified 14 genes encoding dirigent proteins (UdDIRs) and 3 pinoresinol-lariciresinol reductase genes (UdPLRs) in nettle, which are two gene families known to be associated with lignan biosynthesis. Expression profiling of these genes on different organs/tissues revealed a specific expression pattern. Particularly, UdDIR7, 12 and 13 displayed a remarkable high expression in the top internode, fibre tissues of bottom internodes and roots, respectively. The relatively high expression of UdPLR1 and UdPLR2 in the young internodes, core tissue of bottom internode and roots is consistent with the high accumulation of lariciresinol and secoisolariciresinol in these tissues. Lignan quantification showed a high abundance of pinoresinol in roots and pinoresinol diglucosides in young internodes and leaves. This study sheds light on lignan composition and biosynthesis in nettle, providing a good basis for further functional analysis of DIRs and PLRs and, ultimately, engineering lignan metabolism in planta and in cell cultures.

Identification of Callose Synthases in Stinging Nettle and Analysis of Their Expression in Different Tissues

“…Nettle plants (clone 13) were grown as previously described [24,49,50]. To summarize, stem apical cuttings were taken from a donor plant, they were immediately dipped in tap water and subsequently in a commercial root-inducing hormone mix in powder form.…”

“…RNA was extracted and its purity/concentration checked as previously described [24,49,50]. Primers were designed with Primer3Plus ( [51] and available at: http://www.bioinformatics.nl/cgibin/primer3plus/primer3plus.cgi) and checked with the OligoAnalyzer Tool from Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) (available at: https://eu.idtdna.com/pages/tools/oligoanalyzer).…”

“…Primers were designed with Primer3Plus ( [51] and available at: http://www.bioinformatics.nl/cgibin/primer3plus/primer3plus.cgi) and checked with the OligoAnalyzer Tool from Integrated DNA Technologies (IDT) (available at: https://eu.idtdna.com/pages/tools/oligoanalyzer). Their amplification efficiencies were calculated using serial dilutions, as described previously [24,49,50].…”

“…The primers for the reference genes were previously reported [50]. For qPCR analysis, the method described previously for 384-wells plates was used [24,49,50]. Data were analysed using qBASE PLUS (Biogazelle, Zwijnaarde, Belgium).…”

Acridine‐Thiosemicarbazones‐Stabilized Silver Nanoparticles as a Selective Sensor for Copper(II)‐Ion in Tap Water

“…Several analytical methods are reported in literature for the detection of copper such as atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS), [10][11][12][13] inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), [14,15] fluorescent spectroscopy, [16][17][18][19] electrochemical, [20] voltammetry, [21] colorimetry, [22,23] surface-enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy (SERS), [24,25] fluorimetric method/analysis [26][27][28][29] etc. Most of the above-mentioned techniques require highly sophisticated instruments and time-consuming sample preparations steps.…”