Dissection of flag leaf metabolic shifts and their relationship with those occurring simultaneously in developing seed by application of non-targeted metabolomics

Chaoyang Hu; Jun Rao; Yue Song; Shen-An Chan; Takayuki Tohge; Bo Cui; Hong Lin; Alisdair R Fernie; Dabing Zhang; Jianxin Shi

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227577

Dissection of flag leaf metabolic shifts and their relationship with those occurring simultaneously in developing seed by application of non-targeted metabolomics

PLoS One. 2020 Jan 24;15(1):e0227577. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227577. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Chaoyang Hu^{1

2}, Jun Rao³, Yue Song⁴, Shen-An Chan⁴, Takayuki Tohge⁵, Bo Cui², Hong Lin², Alisdair R Fernie⁵, Dabing Zhang², Jianxin Shi²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Marine Biotechnology of Zhejiang Province, Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biotechnology of Ministry of Education, School of Marine Sciences, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
² Joint International Research Laboratory of Metabolic & Developmental Sciences, SJTU-University of Adelaide Joint Centre for Agriculture and Health, School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
³ Jiangxi Cancer Hospital, Nanchang, China.
⁴ Agilent Technologies Incorporated Company, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Central Metabolism Group, Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Potsdam, Golm, Germany.

Abstract

Rice flag leaves are major source organs providing more than half of the nutrition needed for rice seed development. The dynamic metabolic changes in rice flag leaves and the detailed metabolic relationship between source and sink organs in rice, however, remain largely unknown. In this study, the metabolic changes of flag leaves in two japonica and two indica rice cultivars were investigated using non-targeted metabolomics approach. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that flag leaf metabolomes varied significantly depending on both species and developmental stage. Only a few of the metabolites in flag leaves displayed the same change pattern across the four tested cultivars along the process of seed development. Further association analysis found that levels of 45 metabolites in seeds that are associated with human nutrition and health correlated significantly with their levels in flag leaves. Comparison of metabolomics of flag leaves and seeds revealed that some flavonoids were specific or much higher in flag leaves while some lipid metabolites such as phospholipids were much higher in seeds. This reflected not only the function of the tissue specific metabolism but also the different physiological properties and metabolic adaptive features of these two tissues.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Metabolomics*
Oryza / growth & development
Oryza / metabolism
Plant Leaves / metabolism*
Seeds / growth & development*

Grants and funding

This work was partly supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation for the Youth of China (Grant No. 31701400), the China National Transgenic Plant Special Fund (Grant No. 2016ZX08012-002), and the Program of Introducing Talents of Discipline to Universities (111 Project, B14016). This research was also sponsored by the K.C. Wong Magna Fund in Ningbo University. Yue Song and Shen-An Chan are employed by Agilent Technologies Incorporated Company. Agilent Technologies Incorporated Company provided support in the form of salaries for authors YS and SC, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.