Project description:Nepenthes is a genus of carnivorous plants that evolved a pitfall trap, the pitcher, to catch and digest insect prey to obtain additional nutrients. Each pitcher is part of the whole leaf, together with a leaf blade. These two completely different parts of the same organ were studied separately in a non-targeted metabolomics approach in Nepenthes x ventrata, a robust natural hybrid. The first aim was the analysis and profiling of small (50-1000 m/z) polar and non-polar molecules to find a characteristic metabolite pattern for the particular tissues. Second, the impact of insect feeding on the metabolome of the pitcher and leaf blade was studied. Using UPLC-ESI-qTOF and cheminformatics, about 2000 features (MS/MS events) were detected in the two tissues. They showed a huge chemical diversity, harboring classes of chemical substances that significantly discriminate these tissues. Among the common constituents of N. x ventrata are phenolics, flavonoids and naphthoquinones, namely plumbagin, a characteristic compound for carnivorous Nepenthales, and many yet-unknown compounds. Upon insect feeding, only in pitchers in the polar compounds fraction, small but significant differences could be detected. By further integrating information with cheminformatics approaches, we provide and discuss evidence that the metabolite composition of the tissues can point to their function.
Project description:This study was aimed to determine roles of individual myosins in organelle trafficking in plant cell. Expression of Myosin XI-K was suppressed in transgenic A.thaliana by using RNAi approach. To ensure that the RNAi-induced gene silencing was specific and did not affect expression of other myosins, a microarray analysis was performed. Experiment Overall Design: Total RNA was purified from A.thaliana plants transformed with an inverted repeat construct harbouring a sequence derived from Myosin XI-K ORF. 3 independent groups of plants were used for comparison of the expression profiles of 17 myosin RNAs to a control group comprised of plants constitutively expressing GUS ORF as a transgene.