24Plants produce myriad taxonomically restricted specialized metabolites. This diversity -and our 25 ability to correlate genotype with phenotype -makes the evolution of these ecologically and 26 medicinally important compounds interesting and experimentally tractable. Trichomes of tomato 27 and other nightshade family plants produce structurally diverse protective compounds termed 28 acylsugars. While cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) accumulates strictly acylsucroses, 29 the South American wild relative Solanum pennellii produces copious amounts of acylglucoses. 30 Genetic, transgenic and biochemical dissection of the S. pennellii acylglucose biosynthetic 31 pathway identified a trichome gland cell expressed invertase-like enzyme that hydrolyzes 32 acylsucroses (Sopen03g040490). This enzyme acts on the pyranose ring-acylated acylsucroses 33 Science Advances
Manuscript TemplatePage 2 of 50 found in the wild tomato but not the furanose ring-decorated acylsucroses of cultivated tomato. 34 These results show that modification of the core acylsucrose biosynthetic pathway leading to loss 35 of furanose ring acylation set the stage for co-option of a general metabolic enzyme to produce a 36 new class of protective compounds. 37 38 48 This leads to new and modified pathways that produce structurally and functionally diverse 49 specialized metabolites. 50 Glandular trichome-synthesized acylated sugars ('acylsugars') are structurally diverse 51 specialized metabolites found throughout the Solanaceae (7-13). These compounds have 52 documented roles in direct and indirect protection against herbivores and microbes (14, 15), as 53 well as allelopathic properties (15, 16). Their low toxicity to vertebrates generates interest in 54 generating plant breeding strategies for deploying acylsugars in crop protection (17, 18). These 55 metabolites consist of a sugar core -typically sucrose -with aliphatic chains of variable length, 56 structure and number attached by ester linkages. Acylsugars were reported from genera across the 57 Solanaceae family, including Datura, Nicotiana, Petunia, Physalis, Salpiglossis, and Solanum 58 Science Advances Manuscript Template Page 3 of 50with single species producing at least three dozen chromatographically distinct acylsugars (10, 13, 59 16, 19-22). 60 In recent years, several evolutionarily-related enzymes were implicated in the core 61 acylsucrose biosynthetic pathways in species across the family, including the cultivated tomato 62 Solanum lycopersicum, Petunia axillaris and Salpiglossis sinuata (7,(9)(10)(11)(12) 23). These 63 biosynthetic pathways consist of trichome-expressed BAHD-family acylsugar acyltransferases 64 (ASATs) (7, 9, 23), which sequentially transfer acyl groups from acyl-coenzyme A (acyl-CoA) 65 substrates to specific hydroxyl groups of sucrose (7, 9, 23). 66 The cultivated tomato biosynthetic network is well characterized, with four ASATs -67 SlASAT1 through SlASAT4 -catalyzing consecutive reactions to produce tri-and tetra-acylate...