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Original Research
12 May 2022

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) technology is an efficient genome editing tool used in multiple plant species. However, it has not been applied to Tartary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum), which is an important edible and medicinal crop rich in rutin and other flavonoids. FtMYB45 is an R2R3-type MYB transcription factor that negatively regulates flavonoid biosynthesis in Tartary buckwheat. Here, the CRISPR/Cas9 system polycistronic tRNA-sgRNA (PTG)/Cas9 was employed to knock out the FtMYB45 gene in Tartary buckwheat. Two single-guide RNAs (sgRNAs) were designed to target the second exon of the FtMYB45 gene. Twelve transgenic hairy roots were obtained using Agrobacterium rhizogenes-mediated transformation. Sequencing data revealed that six lines containing six types of mutations at the predicted double-stranded break site were generated using sgRNA1. The mutation frequency reached 50%. A liquid chromatography coupled with triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC-QqQ-MS) based metabolomic analysis revealed that the content of rutin, catechin, and other flavonoids was increased in hairy root mutants compared with that of lines transformed with the empty vector. Thus, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated targeted mutagenesis of FtMYB45 effectively increased the flavonoids content of Tartary buckwheat. This finding demonstrated that the CRISPR/Cas9 system is an efficient tool for precise genome editing in Tartary buckwheat and lays the foundation for gene function research and quality improvement in Tartary buckwheat.

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Review
29 April 2022
Research Progress and Trends in Metabolomics of Fruit Trees
Jing Li
9 more and 
Jing Wang
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Metabolomics is an indispensable part of modern systems biotechnology, applied in the diseases’ diagnosis, pharmacological mechanism, and quality monitoring of crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. Metabolomics of fruit trees has developed rapidly in recent years, and many important research results have been achieved in combination with transcriptomics, genomics, proteomics, quantitative trait locus (QTL), and genome-wide association study (GWAS). These research results mainly focus on the mechanism of fruit quality formation, metabolite markers of special quality or physiological period, the mechanism of fruit tree’s response to biotic/abiotic stress and environment, and the genetics mechanism of fruit trait. According to different experimental purposes, different metabolomic strategies could be selected, such as targeted metabolomics, non-targeted metabolomics, pseudo-targeted metabolomics, and widely targeted metabolomics. This article presents metabolomics strategies, key techniques in metabolomics, main applications in fruit trees, and prospects for the future. With the improvement of instruments, analysis platforms, and metabolite databases and decrease in the cost of the experiment, metabolomics will prompt the fruit tree research to achieve more breakthrough results.

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Amino acid sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis of TcMYB29a. (A) Amino acid sequence alignment of TcMYB29a and other known R2R3-MYBs in plants. Conserved residues are highlighted in blue and partial conservation is shown in pink and green. The R2 and R3 domains are indicated with red boxes. The TcMYB29a studied in this study is indicated by blue stars. (B) The phylogenetic tree of TcMYB29a. Phylogenetic analysis of full-length TcMYB29a; TcMYB29a is framed by a solid box. The following GenBank accession numbers are used: Arabidopsis thaliana AtMYB88 (NP_565291.2), AtMYB124 (NP_001077534.1); Taxus chinensis TcMYB29 (QHG11457.1), Larix gmelinii var. olgensis LgMYB7 (QFG01315.1), Nicotiana tomentosiformis NtMYB124 (XP_009593376.1), Glycine max GmMYB88 (XP_003519765.1), Arachis hypogaea AhMYB124 (XP_025699147.1), Vaccinium corymbosum VcMYB29 (AYC35407.1), Paeonia suffruticosa PsMYB (QIG55701.1), Tripterygium wilfordii TwMYB124 (XP_038693483.1), and Abelmoschus esculentus AeMYB28 (QST87265.1). The amino acid sequence of Taxus media, TcMYB3, has been taken from previous research (Yu et al., 2020).
Original Research
04 March 2022

Paclitaxel (Taxol), a highly modified diterpene agent mainly obtained from Taxus species, is the most widely used anticancer drug. Abscisic acid (ABA) is a well-known stress hormone that plays important roles in the secondary metabolism of plants, and it can also induce the accumulation of taxol in Taxus cell suspension cultures. However, the mechanism behind the regulation of taxol biosynthesis by ABA remains largely unknown. In previous research, a R2R3 MYB transcription factor (TF) TcMYB29a was observed to show a significant correlation with taxol biosynthesis, indicative of its potential role in the taxol biosynthesis. In this study, the TcMYB29a encoded by its gene was further characterized. An expression pattern analysis revealed that TcMYB29a was highly expressed in the needles and roots. Overexpression of TcMYB29a in Taxus chinensis cell suspension cultures led to an increased accumulation of taxol, and upregulated expression of taxol-biosynthesis-related genes, including the taxadiene synthase (TS) gene, the taxane 5α-hydroxylase (T5OH) gene, and the 3′-N-debenzoyl-2′-deoxytaxol-N-benzoyltransferase (DBTNBT) gene as compared to the controls. Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays, yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) assays, electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSAs), and dual-luciferase reporter assays verified that TcMYB29a could bind and activate the promoter of TcT5OH. Promoter sequence analysis of TcMYB29a revealed that its promoter containing an AERB site from -313 to -319 was a crucial ABA-responsive element. Subsequently, the ABA treatment assay showed that TcMYB29a was strongly upregulated at 6 h after ABA pretreatment. Furthermore, TcMYB29a was strongly suppressed at 3 h after the methyl jasmonate (MeJA) treatment and was depressed to the platform at 12 h. Taken together, these results reveal that TcMYB29a is an activator that improves the accumulation of taxol in Taxus chinensis cells through an ABA-medicated signaling pathway which is different from JA-medicated signaling pathways for the accumulation of taxol. These findings provide new insights into the potential regulatory roles of MYBs on the expression of taxol biosynthetic genes in Taxus.

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Frontiers in Plant Science

Biofabrication and Synthetic Biology for Enhanced Medicinal Plant Bioproduction
Edited by Zishan Ahmad, Mohammad Faisal, Marcos Edel Martinez-Montero
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21 October 2024
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