Ray Heather, Georges Fawzy
Plant Biotechnology Institute, National Research Council of Canada, Saskatoon, SK., Canada.
GM Crops. 2010 Mar-Apr;1(2):99-106. doi: 10.4161/gmcr.1.2.11891.
Cultivated faba bean (Vicia faba) is widely used as human food, especially in Europe, Northern Africa and China. In view of its superior feeding value over field peas or other legumes, it is also widely used as animal feed for a variety of species. V. faba also contains medically important components such as 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (levo-DOPA, L-DOPA), the principal treatment used for Parkinson's disease patients. However, this species also contains several antinutritional components, including the pyrimidine glycosides vicine and convicine; phytates; and the sucrose galactosides including raffinose, stachyose and verbascose. We have undertaken a genomic project to provide publicly available expressed sequence tag sequences (EST) prepared from early to mid developing embryo in an attempt to identify genes that are likely to be involved in the biosynthesis of L-DOPA and the vicine group of compounds. As initial examples of the utility of this approach, we describe the complete sequence of fabatin, new defensins, type 4 metallothioneins and a variety of other key genes which were identified in this EST library. No candidate sequences corresponding to the biosynthesis of L-DOPA or the vicine group could be identified at this early stage of seed development.
栽培蚕豆（Vicia faba）被广泛用作人类食物，尤其是在欧洲、北非和中国。鉴于其相对于野豌豆或其他豆类具有更高的饲用价值，它也被广泛用作多种动物的饲料。蚕豆还含有一些具有重要医学意义的成分，如3,4-二羟基苯丙氨酸（左旋多巴，L-DOPA），这是治疗帕金森病患者的主要药物。然而，该物种也含有多种抗营养成分，包括嘧啶糖苷蚕豆嘧啶和伴蚕豆嘧啶；植酸盐；以及蔗糖半乳糖苷，包括棉子糖、水苏糖和毛蕊花糖。我们开展了一个基因组项目，以提供从发育早期到中期胚胎制备的公开可用的表达序列标签序列（EST），试图鉴定可能参与L-DOPA和蚕豆嘧啶类化合物生物合成的基因。作为这种方法实用性的初步实例，我们描述了蚕豆凝集素、新防御素、4型金属硫蛋白以及在该EST文库中鉴定出的多种其他关键基因的完整序列。在种子发育的这个早期阶段，尚未鉴定出与L-DOPA或蚕豆嘧啶类生物合成相对应的候选序列。
