3 H-L -Phenylalanine is incorporated into a range of phenylpropanoid compounds when fed to tobacco cell cultures. A significant proportion of 3 H-trans -cinnamic acid formed from 3 H-L -phenylalanine did not equilibrate with exogenous trans -cinnamic acid and therefore may be rapidly channeled through the cinnamate 4-hydroxylase (C4H) reaction to 4-coumaric acid. Such compartmentalization of trans -cinnamic acid was not observed after elicitation or in cell cultures constitutively expressing a bean phenylalanine ammonia-lyase ( PAL ) transgene. Channeling between PAL and C4H was confirmed in vitro in isolated microsomes from tobacco stems or cell suspension cultures. This channeling was strongly reduced in microsomes from stems or cell cultures of transgenic PAL -overexpressing plants or after elicitation of wild-type cell cultures. Protein gel blot analysis showed that tobacco PAL1 and bean PAL were localized in both soluble and microsomal fractions, whereas tobacco PAL2 was found only in the soluble fraction. We propose that metabolic channeling of trans -cinnamic acid requires the close association of specific forms of PAL with C4H on microsomal membranes.
INTRODUCTIONThe phenylpropanoid pathway is involved in the biosynthesis of a wide variety of natural products from plants. Many of these products have important functions in plant development and in interactions of the plant with its environment (Hahlbrock and Grisebach, 1979;Hahlbrock and Scheel, 1989;Dixon and Paiva, 1995). Many studies have addressed the transcriptional regulation of genes encoding enzymes of the phenylpropanoid pathway and subsequent changes in extractable enzyme activities in response to developmental and environmental cues Lawton and Lamb, 1987;Hahlbrock and Scheel, 1989). Far less attention has been paid to how the cell regulates flux into different end products of the pathway once all of the enzymatic machinery is assembled.The first committed step in the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoid compounds is the conversion of L -phenylalanine (Phe) to trans -cinnamic acid by L -Phe ammonia-lyase (PAL; EC 4.3.1.5; Figure 1). PAL is a tetrameric enzyme whose subunits are encoded by a multigene family in most species that have been studied (Cramer et al., 1989;Nagai et al., 1994; Wanner et al., 1995;Fukasawa-Akada et al., 1996).PAL genes are transcriptionally activated after microbial infection or treatment of plant cells with microbial elicitors (Edwards et al., 1985;Lawton and Lamb, 1987). The second step in the phenylpropanoid pathway, the hydroxylation of trans -cinnamic acid to 4-coumaric acid, is catalyzed by a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase, cinnamic acid 4-hydroxylase (C4H; EC 1.14. 13.11;Russell and Conn, 1967;Fahrendorf and Dixon, 1993;Teutsch et al., 1993). C4H is induced by light, elicitors, and wounding (Fahrendorf and Dixon, 1993;Buell and Somerville, 1995;Batard et al., 1997;Bell-Lelong et al., 1997), and its induction often is closely coordinated with PAL induction (Mizutani et al., 1997).Enzymes of complex metabolic pathways may...