Scandola Sabine, Mehta Devang, Castillo Brigo, Boyce Nicholas, Uhrig R Glen
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada.
Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jul 28;14:1170448. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1170448. eCollection 2023.
Kale is a group of diverse species that are nutritious leafy greens consumed for their abundance of vitamins and micronutrients. Typified by their curly, serrated and/or wavy leaves, kale varieties have been primarily defined based on their leaf morphology and geographic origin, despite having complex genetic backgrounds. Kale is a very promising crop for vertical farming due to its high nutritional content; however, being a non-model organism, foundational, systems-level analyses of kale are lacking. Previous studies in kale have shown that time-of-day harvesting can affect its nutritional composition. Therefore, to gain a systems-level diel understanding of kale across its wide-ranging and diverse genetic landscape, we selected nine publicly available and commercially grown kale cultivars for growth under near-sunlight LED light conditions ideal for vertical farming. We then analyzed changes in morphology, growth and nutrition using a combination of plant phenotyping, proteomics and metabolomics. As the diel molecular activities of plants drive their daily growth and development, ultimately determining their productivity as a crop, we harvested kale leaf tissue at both end-of-day (ED) and end-of-night (EN) time-points for all molecular analyses. Our results reveal that diel proteome and metabolome signatures divide the selected kale cultivars into two groups defined by their amino acid and sugar content, along with significant proteome differences involving carbon and nitrogen metabolism, mRNA splicing, protein translation and light harvesting. Together, our multi-cultivar, multi-omic analysis provides new insights into the molecular underpinnings of the diel growth and development landscape of kale, advancing our fundamental understanding of this nutritious leafy green super-food for horticulture/vertical farming applications.
羽衣甘蓝是一组多样的物种，是营养丰富的叶菜类蔬菜，因其富含维生素和微量营养素而被食用。羽衣甘蓝品种以其卷曲、锯齿状和/或波浪状的叶子为典型特征，尽管其遗传背景复杂，但主要是根据其叶片形态和地理起源来定义的。由于其高营养含量，羽衣甘蓝是垂直种植中非常有前景的作物；然而，作为一种非模式生物，缺乏对羽衣甘蓝的基础系统水平分析。此前对羽衣甘蓝的研究表明，一天中不同时间收获会影响其营养成分。因此，为了在其广泛多样的遗传背景下对羽衣甘蓝进行系统水平的昼夜理解，我们选择了9个公开可得且商业种植的羽衣甘蓝品种，在适合垂直种植的近阳光LED光照条件下生长。然后，我们结合植物表型分析、蛋白质组学和代谢组学，分析了形态、生长和营养方面的变化。由于植物的昼夜分子活动驱动其日常生长和发育，最终决定其作为作物的生产力，我们在一天结束（ED）和夜晚结束（EN）这两个时间点收获羽衣甘蓝叶片组织，用于所有分子分析。我们的结果表明，昼夜蛋白质组和代谢组特征将所选的羽衣甘蓝品种分为两组，这两组由其氨基酸和糖含量定义，同时在涉及碳和氮代谢、mRNA剪接、蛋白质翻译和光捕获的蛋白质组方面存在显著差异。总之，我们的多品种、多组学分析为羽衣甘蓝昼夜生长和发育景观的分子基础提供了新的见解，推进了我们对这种营养丰富的叶菜类超级食物在园艺/垂直种植应用方面的基本理解。
