biologia plantarum

Biologia plantarum 65:351-358, 2021 | DOI: 10.32615/bp.2021.054

Cloning and functional characterization of a terpene synthase gene AlTPS1 from Atractylodes lancea

L.N. CHEN¹, Y. H. LI¹, X. HUANG^{1, 2}, J. DENG¹, C. L. QU¹, X. Q. ZHANG^{1, 2}, B.S. HUANG¹, Y. ZHANG³, L. GONG^{1, 2, *}, K. YU^{1, 2, *}

¹ College of Pharmacy, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan 430065, P.R. China

² Hubei Key Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine Resource and Chemistry, Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan 430060, P.R. China

³ National Resource Center for Chinese Materia Medica, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, P.R. China

Atractylodes lancea (Thunb.) DC has been used widely as a medicinal herb for centuries and is now being used to treat COVID-19 pneumonia. Terpenoids are thought to be its main pharmacologically active constituents. However, their biosynthesis remains uncharacterized in this species. In this study, the terpene synthase gene AlTPS1 was cloned and functionally characterized. We found that AlTPS1 was a bifunctional enzyme that catalyzed the conversion of farnesyl diphosphate to nerolidol and geranyl diphosphate to linalool in vitro. However, it functioned only in the nerolidol production in vivo by transient expression of the AlTPS1 gene in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves maybe due to subcellular compartmentalization of the AlTPS1 in the cytosol. Furthermore, AlTPS1 was highly expressed in leaves, considered to be the sites of nerolidol synthesis. This study is the first in which the cloning and expression of the AlTPS1 gene from A. lancea were analyzed, and it has provided new insights into terpene biosynthesis in A. lancea.

Keywords: Atractylodes lancea, linalool, nerolidol, Nicotiana benthamiana, subcellular compartmentalization, terpene synthase.

Received: January 28, 2021; Revised: August 7, 2021; Accepted: September 1, 2021; Published online: December 29, 2021  Show citation