Gibson Makenzie, Thives Santos William, Oyler Alan R, Busta Lucas, Schenck Craig A
Interdisciplinary Plant Group, Department of Biochemistry University of Missouri Columbia Missouri USA.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth Minnesota USA.
Appl Plant Sci. 2025 Apr 14;13(4):e70006. doi: 10.1002/aps3.70006. eCollection 2025 Jul-Aug.
Specialized metabolites serve various roles for plants and humans. Unlike core metabolites, specialized metabolites are restricted to certain plant lineages; thus, in addition to their ecological functions, specialized metabolites can serve as diagnostic markers of plant lineages.
We investigated the phylogenetic distribution of plant metabolites using non-proteogenic amino acids (NPAA). Species-NPAA associations for eight NPAAs were identified from the existing literature and placed within a phylogenetic context using R packages and the Interactive Tree of Life. To confirm and extend the literature-based NPAA distribution, we selected azetidine-2-carboxylic acid (Aze) and screened over 70 diverse plants using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
Literature searches identified 163 NPAA-relevant articles, which were manually inspected to identify 822 species-NPAA associations. NPAAs were mapped at the order and genus level, revealing that some NPAAs are restricted to single orders, whereas others are present across divergent taxa. The observed distribution of Aze across plants and ancestral state reconstruction suggests a convergent evolutionary history.
Although reliance on chemotaxonomy has decreased in recent years, there is still value in placing metabolites within a phylogenetic context to understand the evolutionary processes of plant chemical diversification. This approach can be applied to metabolites present in any organism and compared at a range of taxonomic levels.
特殊代谢产物对植物和人类具有多种作用。与核心代谢产物不同，特殊代谢产物仅限于某些植物谱系；因此，除了其生态功能外，特殊代谢产物还可作为植物谱系的诊断标记。
我们使用非蛋白质氨基酸（NPAA）研究了植物代谢产物的系统发育分布。从现有文献中确定了8种NPAA的物种-NPAA关联，并使用R包和交互式生命树将其置于系统发育背景中。为了确认并扩展基于文献的NPAA分布，我们选择了氮杂环丁烷-2-羧酸（Aze），并使用气相色谱-质谱联用（GC-MS）对70多种不同植物进行了筛选。
文献检索确定了163篇与NPAA相关的文章，经人工检查确定了822种物种-NPAA关联。NPAA被定位到目和属水平，表明一些NPAA仅限于单个目，而其他NPAA则存在于不同的分类群中。观察到的Aze在植物中的分布以及祖先状态重建表明其具有趋同的进化历史。
尽管近年来对化学分类学的依赖有所减少，但将代谢产物置于系统发育背景中以了解植物化学多样性的进化过程仍然具有价值。这种方法可应用于任何生物体中存在的代谢产物，并可在一系列分类水平上进行比较。
