Isolation of Sesquiterpene Synthase Homolog from Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer

Abstract

: Sesquiterpenes are found naturally in plants and insects as defensive agents or pheromones. They are produced in the cytosolic acetate/mevalonate pathway for isoprenoid biosynthesis. The inducible sesquiterpene synthases (STS), which are responsible for the transformation of the precursor farnesyl diphosphate, appear to generate very few olefinic products that are converted to biologically active metabolites. In this study, we isolated the STS gene from Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer, designated PgSTS, and investigated the correlation between its expression and various abiotic stresses using real-time PCR. PgSTS cDNA was observed to be 1,883 nucleotides long with an open reading frame of 1,707 bp, encoding a protein of 568 amino acids. The molecular mass of the mature protein was determined to be 65.5 kDa, with a predicted isoelectric point of 5.98. A GenBank BlastX search revealed the deduced amino acid sequence of PgSTS to be homologous to STS from other plants, with the highest similarity to an STS from Lycopersicon hirsutum (55% identity, 51% similarity). Real-time PCR analysis showed that different abiotic stresses triggered significant induction of PgSTS expression at different time points.

Overexpression of Panax ginseng sesquiterpene synthase gene confers tolerance against Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato in Arabidopsis thaliana

“…Thus, it convinced that elicitors treatment raised the production of sesquiterpenes. (Khorolragchaa et al 2010). PgSTS had the highest sequence homology to STS 1 and 2 from Thapsia garganica (AFV09098 and AFV09099), with similarities of 59 and 62 %, respectively.…”

“…The PgSTS gene from our previous report (Khorolragchaa et al 2010) was analyzed using BioEdit, ClustalX, MEGA5.1 Beta3 and NCBI BlastX (Alschul et al 1997;Thompson et al 1997;Tamura et al 2011). GENSCAN server (http://genes.mit.edu/GENSCAN.html) was used to generate STS protein sequence, then, the obtained sequence was subjected to NCBI-BLAST.…”

“…Here, we investigated such volatiles in detail and isolated several interesting sesquiterpenes from ginseng seedlings. We previously isolated PgSTS gene (KF294501) from P. ginseng and its expression against various environmental stress conditions were analyzed (Khorolragchaa et al 2010). Furthermore, we performed functional characterization of PgSTS overexpressing lines in Arabidopsis in response to exogenous elicitors against Pseudomonas syringae pv.…”

Src and Syk are targeted to an anti-inflammatory ethanol extract of Aralia continentalis

“…Semi-quantitative RT reactions were conducted as reported previously (Kim et al, 2010c). The mRNA was quantified by realtime RT-PCR with SYBR Premix Ex Taq according to the manufacturer's instructions (Takara, Japan) using a real-time thermal cycler (Bio-Rad, USA) as reported previously (Khorolragchaa et al, 2010). The results were expressed as the ratio of the optimal density relative to GAPDH.…”

Sterols isolated from seeds of Panax ginseng and their antiinflammatory activities

“…Meyer), a traditional herbal medicine, has been used as a tonic for the treatment of various diseases. [56] The entire ginseng plant, including leaves, flower buds, and berries, has been comprehensively studied, and many dammarane-type triterpenes have been characterized as principal components. [78] However, the seeds of P. ginseng have not been investigated intensively.…”