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Facing herbivory on the climb up: Lost opportunities as the main cost of herbivory in the wild yam Dioscorea praehensilis.

ABSTRACT: Plants with simple architecture and strong constraints on their growth may offer critical insights into how growth strategies affect the tolerance of plants to herbivory. Although Dioscorea praehensilis, a wild yam of African forests, is perennial, both aerial apparatus and tuber are annually renewed. Each year, the tuber produces a single stem that climbs from the ground to the forest canopy. This stem bears no leaves and no branches until it reaches optimal light conditions. Once in the canopy, the plant's production fuels the filling of a new tuber before the plant dies back to the ground. We hypothesized that if deprived of ant defense, the leafless growth phase is a vulnerable part of the cycle, during which a small amount of herbivory entails a high cost in terms of loss of opportunity. We compared the growth of stems bearing ants or not as well as of intact stems and stems subjected to simulated or natural herbivory. Ants reduce herbivory; herbivory delays arrival to the canopy and shortens the season of production. Artificially prolonging the stem growth to the canopy increased plant mortality in the following year and, in surviving plants, reduced the stem diameter and likely the underground reserves produced. Tuber size is a key variable in plant performance as it affects both the size of the aerial apparatus and the duration of its single season of production. Aerial apparatus and tuber are thus locked into a cycle of reciprocal annual renewal. Costs due to loss of opportunity may play a major role in plant tolerance to herbivory, especially when architectural constraints interact with ecological conditions to shape the plant's growth strategy.

SUBMITTER: Di Giusto B

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5574755 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Facing herbivory on the climb up: Lost opportunities as the main cost of herbivory in the wild yam <i>Dioscorea praehensilis</i>.

Di Giusto Bruno B Dounias Edmond E McKey Doyle B DB

Ecology and evolution 20170711 16

Plants with simple architecture and strong constraints on their growth may offer critical insights into how growth strategies affect the tolerance of plants to herbivory. Although <i>Dioscorea praehensilis,</i> a wild yam of African forests, is perennial, both aerial apparatus and tuber are annually renewed. Each year, the tuber produces a single stem that climbs from the ground to the forest canopy. This stem bears no leaves and no branches until it reaches optimal light conditions. Once in the ...[more]

PMID: 28861251

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Project description:Background/Aim: Our previous in vitro high throughput (HTP) botanical anticancer cytotoxic screenings indicated that the wild yam extract (Dioscorea villosa (WYE)) has very potent anticancer effects in terms of espousing cell death with a low IC50 across diverse cancer cell lines including glioblastoma, melanoma, colon, neuroblastoma, and breast. However, unlike other botanicals we have focused on, WYE contains a high content of detergent steroidal saponins. As surfactants, they act by direct contact to rapidly reduce oil-water interfacial tensions causing disintegration of bio-lipid membranes. This study examined the WYE at sub-lethal concentrations where the saponin content does not create an interfering variable of lytic cell death in MDA-MB-231 triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells. Methods: A method validation study was first set up to cross-confirm the inverse relationship between saponin content with lytic cell death, where saponins were associated with loss of plasma and mitochondrial membrane potential and cytotoxic effects in both 2D and 3D cultures. Once appropriate sub-lethal concentrations were established, we then monitored changes in whole transcriptomic (WT) mRNA, miRNA, and long intergenic non-coding RNAs and cross- confirm this data by cell proliferation studies spot test antibody-protein arrays, and ELISA. Results: Upregulated DEGS reflected immune-stimulating effects centering on TNF signaling, COX2, cytokine release, and cholesterol/steroid biosynthesis. Downregulated DEGs show a very different transcriptome signature, revealing severe, extensive damage to cell cycle processes, including loss of transcripts for cell division cycle (CDC) genes (25A,45,6,7, A2, A7, A7L,8) cyclins (CCN.) (A2, B1, B2, E2, F) as well as cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), centromere proteins (CENP), kinesin family members (KIFs), and polo-like kinases (PLKs) with exception to a corresponding upregulated DEG for p21 gene CDKN1A, all which were corroborated by the cytostatic effects confirmed during a 6-day proliferation study. Conclusions: In conclusion, WYE appears to mediate a saponin lytic effect at high concentration on direct contact, however at lower concentrations and independent of cell death, there exist three distinct biological consequences as found in this breast cancer cell model, including pro-inflammatory, steroid biosynthetic, and collapse of the cell cycle.

Dataset Information

Facing herbivory on the climb up: Lost opportunities as the main cost of herbivory in the wild yam Dioscorea praehensilis.

Publications

Facing herbivory on the climb up: Lost opportunities as the main cost of herbivory in the wild yam <i>Dioscorea praehensilis</i>.

Similar Datasets

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