Dataset Information

Mortierella alpina CS10E4, an oleaginous fungal endophyte of Crocus sativus L. enhances apocarotenoid biosynthesis and stress tolerance in the host plant.

ABSTRACT: Crocus sativus is the only plant species which produces apocarotenoids like crocin, picrocrocin and safranal in significant amounts. These compounds impart organoleptic properties to saffron (dried stigmas of Crocus flower) making it world's costliest spice. Crocus apocarotenoids have tremendous medicinal properties as well. Effect of endophytes on Crocus apocarotenoid production and the molecular mechanism involved has not been reported so far. Here we studied the effect of an oleaginous fungal endophyte, Mortierella alpina CS10E4 on Crocus growth, apocarotenoid metabolism and tolerance to corm rot disease. The results demonstrated that there was a significant improvement in many morphological and physiological traits in endophyte treated Crocus plants including total biomass and size of corms, stigma biomass, number of apical sprouting buds, and number of adventitious roots. The endophyte also shifted metabolic flux towards enhanced production of apocarotenoids by modulating the expression of key pathway genes. Further, M. alpina CS10E4 enhanced tolerance to corm rot disease by releasing arachidonic acid which acts as conserved defense signal and induces jasmonic acid production in endophyte treated Crocus corms. This is first report on effect of a fungal endophyte on Crocus apocarotenoid metabolism and stress tolerance.

SUBMITTER: Wani ZA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5561177 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Mortierella alpina CS10E4, an oleaginous fungal endophyte of Crocus sativus L. enhances apocarotenoid biosynthesis and stress tolerance in the host plant.

Wani Zahoor Ahmed ZA Kumar Amit A Sultan Phalisteen P Bindu Kushal K Riyaz-Ul-Hassan Syed S Ashraf Nasheeman N

Scientific reports 20170817 1

Crocus sativus is the only plant species which produces apocarotenoids like crocin, picrocrocin and safranal in significant amounts. These compounds impart organoleptic properties to saffron (dried stigmas of Crocus flower) making it world's costliest spice. Crocus apocarotenoids have tremendous medicinal properties as well. Effect of endophytes on Crocus apocarotenoid production and the molecular mechanism involved has not been reported so far. Here we studied the effect of an oleaginous fungal ...[more]

PMID: 28819197

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Project description:Crocus sativus stigmas form rich source of apocarotenoids like crocin, picrocrocin and saffranal which besides imparting color, flavour and aroma to saffron spice also have tremendous pharmacological properties. Inspite of their importance, the biosynthetic pathway of Crocus apocarotenoids is not fully elucidated. Moreover, the mechanism of their stigma specific accumulation remains unknown. Therefore, deep transcriptome sequencing of Crocus stigma and rest of the flower tissue was done to identify the genes and transcriptional regulators involved in the biosynthesis of these compounds.Transcriptome of stigma and rest of the flower tissue was sequenced using Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx platform which generated 64,604,402 flower and 51,350,714 stigma reads. Sequences were assembled de novo using trinity resulting in 64,438 transcripts which were classified into 32,204 unigenes comprising of 9853 clusters and 22,351 singletons. A comprehensive functional annotation and gene ontology (GO) analysis was carried out. 58.5 % of the transcripts showed similarity to sequences present in public databases while rest could be specific to Crocus. 5789 transcripts showed similarity to transcription factors representing 76 families out of which Myb family was most abundant. Many genes involved in carotenoid/apocarotenoid pathway were identified for the first time in this study which includes zeta-carotene isomerase and desaturase, carotenoid isomerase and lycopene epsilon-cyclase. GO analysis showed that the predominant classes in biological process category include metabolic process followed by cellular process and primary metabolic process. KEGG mapping analysis indicated that pathways involved in ribosome, carbon and starch and sucrose metabolism were highly represented. Differential expression analysis indicated that key carotenoid/apocarotenoid pathway genes including phytoene synthase, phytoene desaturase and carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase 2 are enriched in stigma thereby providing molecular proof for stigma to be the site of apocarotenoid biosynthesis.This data would provide a rich source for understanding the carotenoid/apocarotenoid metabolism in Crocus. The database would also help in investigating many questions related to saffron biology including flower development.

Project description:Background: A large number of undiscovered fungal species still exist on earth, which can be useful for bioprospecting, particularly for single cell oil (SCO) production. Mortierella is one of the significant genera in this field and contains about hundred species. Moreover, M. alpina is the main single cell oil producer at commercial scale under this genus. Methods: Soil samples from four unique locations of North-East Libya were collected for the isolation of oleaginous Mortierellaalpina strains by a serial dilution method. Morphological identification was carried out using light microscopy (Olympus, Japan) and genetic diversity of the isolated Mortierella alpina strains was assessed using conserved internal transcribed spacer (ITS) gene sequences available on the NCBI GenBank database for the confirmation of novelty. The nucleotide sequences reported in this study have been deposited at GenBank (accession no. MZ298831:MZ298835). The MultAlin program was used to align the sequences of closely related strains. The DNA sequences were analyzed for phylogenetic relationships by molecular evolutionary genetic analysis using MEGA X software consisting of Clustal_X v.2.1 for multiple sequence alignment. The neighbour-joining tree was constructed using the Kimura 2-parameter substitution model. Results: The present research study confirms four oleaginous fungal isolates from Libyan soil. These isolates (barcoded as MSU-101, MSU-201, MSU-401 and MSU-501) were discovered and reported for the first time from diverse soil samples of district Aljabal Al-Akhdar in North-East Libya and fall in the class: Zygomycetes; order: Mortierellales. Conclusions: Four oleaginous fungal isolates barcoded as MSU-101, MSU-201, MSU-401 and MSU-501 were identified and confirmed by morphological and molecular analysis. These fungal isolates showed highest similarity with Mortierella alpina species and can be potentialistic single cell oil producers. Thus, the present research study provides insight to the unseen fungal diversity and contributes to more comprehensive Mortierella alpina reference collections worldwide.

Dataset Information

Mortierella alpina CS10E4, an oleaginous fungal endophyte of Crocus sativus L. enhances apocarotenoid biosynthesis and stress tolerance in the host plant.

Publications

Mortierella alpina CS10E4, an oleaginous fungal endophyte of Crocus sativus L. enhances apocarotenoid biosynthesis and stress tolerance in the host plant.

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