Metabolism and transcriptome profiling provides insight into the genes and transcription factors involved in monoterpene biosynthesis of borneol chemotype of Cinnamomum camphora induced by mechanical damage

Abstract

Background The borneol chemotype of Cinnamomum camphora (BCC), a monoterpene-rich woody plant species, is the sole source prescribed by the Chinese Pharmacopoeia for the production of natural D-borneol, a major monoterpene in BCC used for millennia as a topical analgesic in China. Nevertheless, the possible gene-regulatory roles of transcription factors (TFs) in BCC’s monoterpenoid biosynthesis remained unknown. Here, a joint analysis of the transcriptome and terpenoid metabolome of BCC induced by mechanical damage (MD) was used to comprehensively explore the interaction between TFs and terpene synthase (TPS) unigenes that might participate in monoterpene biosynthesis in BCC. Results Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis detected 14 monoterpenes and seven sesquiterpenes. All but two monoterpenes underwent a significantly increased accumulation after the MD treatment. RNA sequencing data revealed that 10 TPS, 82 MYB, 70 AP2/ERF, 38 BHLH, 31 WRKY, and 29 bZIP unigenes responded to the MD treatment. A correlation analysis revealed that three monoterpene synthase genes (CcTPS1, CcTPS3, CcTPS4) highly correlated with multiple monoterpenes, namely D-borneol, camphor, and bornyl acetate, which could be responsible for monoterpenoid biosynthesis in BCC. Furthermore, five WRKY, 15 MYB, 10 ERF/AP2, five bZIP, and two BHLH genes had strong, positive correlations with CcTPS1 or CcTPS4, judging by their high coefficient values (R2 > 0.8). The bioinformatics results were verified by quantitative real-time PCR. Conclusion This study provides insight into the genes involved in the biosynthesis and regulation of monoterpene in BCC and thus provides a pool of candidate genes for future mechanistic analyses of how monoterpenes accumulate in BCC.

Chromosome-level genome assembly of Amomum tsao-ko provides insights into the biosynthesis of flavor compounds

“…Transcription factors regulate the transcription levels of secondary metabolite synthesis pathway genes [ 32 ]. The major transcription factor families, like NAC, ERF, bHLH, MYB, MYC, WRKY, and b-ZIP, have been found and associated with responses to biotic and abiotic stress in plants [ 33 ]. To study the relationship between transcription factors using metabolite networks, 2089 transcription factors from 58 transcription factor families were obtained from an annotation file of the A. tsao-ko genome ( Supplementary Data Table S14 ).…”

System network analysis of Rosmarinus officinalis transcriptome and metabolome—Key genes in biosynthesis of secondary metabolites

“…officinalis , verbenone and camphor known as terpene biocompounds, in the other hand WRKY is identified in all selected modules. In addition, studies on Cinnamomum camphora showed that WRKY, MYB, AP2/ERF, bZIP and bHLH are regulate borneol biosynthesis pathway genes [ 47 ]. HB-HD-ZIP also plays a crucial role in all selected modules.…”

Transcriptome Analyses Revealed the Key Metabolic Genes and Transcription Factors Involved in Terpenoid Biosynthesis in Sacred Lotus

“…In this study, in total, 21 terpenoids were detected ( Table 1 ). Although the genes involved in terpenoid biosynthesis are widely studied in different plants [ 20 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ], genes related to the synthesis of terpenoids in sacred lotus have not been studied so far. The precursors of monoterpenes and diterpenes come from the MEP pathway in plastids, while the precursors of sesquiterpenes and triterpenes come from the MVA pathway in the cytoplasm [ 34 ].…”