Overexpression of AtEDT1 promotes root elongation and affects medicinal secondary metabolite biosynthesis in roots of transgenic Salvia miltiorrhiza

Abstract

Medicinal secondary metabolites (salvianolic acids and tanshinones) are valuable natural bioactive compounds in Salvia miltiorrhiza and have widespread applications. Improvement of medicinal secondary metabolite accumulation through biotechnology is necessary and urgent to satisfy their increasing demand. Herein, it was demonstrated that the overexpression of the transcription factor Arabidopsis thaliana-enhanced drought tolerance 1 (AtEDT1) could affect medicinal secondary metabolite accumulation. In this study, we observed that the transgenic lines significantly conferred drought tolerance phenotype. Meanwhile, we found that the overexpression of AtEDT1 promoted root elongation in S. miltiorrhiza. Interestingly, we also found that the overexpression of AtEDT1 determined the accumulation of salvianolic acids, such as rosmarinic acid, lithospermic acid, salvianolic acid B, and total salvianolic acids due to the induction of the expression levels of salvianolic acid biosynthetic genes. Conversely, S. miltiorrhiza plants overexpressing the AtEDT1 transgene showed a decrease in tanshinone synthesis. Our results demonstrated that the overexpression of AtEDT1 significantly increased the accumulation of salvianolic acids in S. miltiorrhiza. Further studies are required to better elucidate the functional role of AtEDT1 in the regulation of phytochemical compound synthesis.

AtEDT1/HDG11 regulates stomatal density and water‐use efficiency via ERECTA and E2Fa

“…The homeodomain transcriptional factor EDT1/HDG11 upregulates the ERECTA expression, ERECTA promotes endoreduplication through E2Fa, leading to higher ploidy level and thus larger cells and reduced stomatal density, ultimately improving WUE. AtEDT1/HDG11conferred drought resistance and improved WUE have been recapitulated by overexpressing AtEDT1/HDG11in many plant species, including monocots and woody plant (Yu et al, 2008;Cao et al, 2009;Ruan et al, 2012;Yu et al, 2013;Zhu et al, 2015;Li et al, 2016;Yu et al, 2016;Zhu et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2017), implicating a possible conserved mechanism in plants.…”

The Protein Kinase SmSnRK2.6 Positively Regulates Phenolic Acid Biosynthesis in Salvia miltiorrhiza by Interacting with SmAREB1

“…In response, many studies have since focused on increasing this species phenolic acid contents by either overexpressing or suppressing its transcription factors or key enzyme genes within the relevant metabolic pathways. For example, the overexpression of SmTAT , SmC4H , SmHPPR , AtPAP1 , AtEDT1 , and SmPAP1 induced a substantial accumulation of phenolic acids in the transgenic S. miltiorrhiza ( Zhang Y. et al, 2010 ; Xiao et al, 2011 ; Hao et al, 2016 ; Liu Y. et al, 2016 ), whereas the downregulation of SmMYB39 , SmHPPD , SmCCR1 , or SmCHS all increased the content of phenolic acids ( Xiao et al, 2011 ; Wang et al, 2012 ; Zhang et al, 2013 ; Zhang et al, 2015 ).…”

Tanshinones, Critical Pharmacological Components in Salvia miltiorrhiza

“…It is essential to use modern biotechnology methods to increase the yield. Therefore, various in vitro culture systems of S. miltiorrhiza , including suspension cell (Zhao et al, 2010), callus (Wu et al, 2003), adventitious root and hairy root, as well as new techniques such as using endophytic fungi (Li et al, 2016; Zhou et al, 2018) and transgenic plants (Liu et al, 2017; Wei et al, 2018), can be used to accumulate tanshinone production.…”