Barco Brenden, Clay Nicole K
Department of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States.
Front Plant Sci. 2020 Jan 31;10:1775. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2019.01775. eCollection 2019.
The plant kingdom produces hundreds of thousands of specialized bioactive metabolites, some with pharmaceutical and biotechnological importance. Their biosynthesis and function have been studied for decades, but comparatively less is known about how transcription factors with overlapping functions and contrasting regulatory activities coordinately control the dynamics and output of plant specialized metabolism. Here, we performed temporal studies on pathogen-infected intact host plants with perturbed transcription factors. We identified WRKY33 as the condition-dependent master regulator and MYB51 as the dual functional regulator in a hierarchical gene network likely responsible for the gene expression dynamics and metabolic fluxes in the camalexin and 4-hydroxy-indole-3-carbonylnitrile (4OH-ICN) pathways. This network may have also facilitated the regulatory capture of the newly evolved 4OH-ICN pathway in by the more-conserved transcription factor MYB51. It has long been held that the plasticity of plant specialized metabolism and the canalization of development should be differently regulated; our findings imply a common hierarchical regulatory architecture orchestrated by transcription factors for specialized metabolism and development, making it an attractive target for metabolic engineering.
植物王国产生了成千上万种特殊的生物活性代谢产物，其中一些具有药物和生物技术重要性。它们的生物合成和功能已经研究了几十年，但对于具有重叠功能和相反调控活性的转录因子如何协同控制植物特殊代谢的动态变化和产物，人们了解得相对较少。在这里，我们对转录因子受到干扰的病原体感染的完整宿主植物进行了时间研究。我们确定WRKY33为条件依赖性主调控因子，MYB51为分层基因网络中的双功能调控因子，该网络可能负责植保素和4-羟基吲哚-3-羰基腈（4OH-ICN）途径中的基因表达动态和代谢通量。该网络还可能促进了保守性更高的转录因子MYB51对新进化出的4OH-ICN途径的调控。长期以来，人们一直认为植物特殊代谢的可塑性和发育的定向分化应该受到不同的调控；我们的研究结果表明，转录因子为特殊代谢和发育精心编排了一种共同的分层调控结构，使其成为代谢工程的一个有吸引力的靶点。
