ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1593315
This article is part of the Research TopicEvolution, Accumulation and Metabolic Engineering of Plant Secondary MetabolitesView all articles
Transcriptome analysis of Thevetia peruviana cell suspensions treated with methyl jasmonate reveals genes involved in phenolics, flavonoids and cardiac glycosides biosynthesis
Provisionally accepted
Olmedo Jesus Cuaspud Caliz1,2*
Dary Luz Mendoza3*
Gigliola Navarro1,2Juan Pablo Arias4Isabel Cristina Calle1Juliana Estefania Arcila1,5
Rafael Eduardo Arango Isaza1- 1Facultad de Ciencias, Grupo de Investigación en Biotecnología Vegetal UNALMED - CIB. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia
- 2Facultad de Ciencias, Grupo de Investigación en Biotecnología Industrial. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia
- 3Facultad de Ciencias Basicas, Grupo de Productos Naturales y Bioquímica de Macromoléculas, Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia
- 4Escuela de Ciencias de la Vida y Medicina, Grupo de Investigación en Síntesis Orgánica, de Polímeros y Biotecnología Aplicada (SINBIOTEC), Universidad EIA, Envigado, Colombia
- 5Biosciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom
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Thevetia peruviana (Pers.) K. Schum is a tropical shrub with recognized ethnomedicinal applications associated with the presence of secondary metabolites (SMs), wich exhibit cardiotonic, antioxidant, antimicrobial and anticancer activities. Previous studies have shown that methyl jasmonate (MeJA), when exogenously applied to T. peruviana cell cultures, activates the production of phenolic compounds (PCs), flavonoids (Fvs) and cardiac glycosides (CGs); however, the biochemical mechanisms involved in the MeJA-regulated biosynthetic pathways remain unknown. To deepen our understanding of the effect of MeJA on the secondary metabolism of T. peruviana, transcriptome sequencing was performed on suspension cell culture. A first draft transcriptome of T. peruviana was obtained, with an average N50 length of 3570 bp, comprising a total of 83126 unigenes. Differential gene expression analysis was conducted to evaluate the effects of treatment with 3 µM MeJA. In MeJA-treated cells, genes involved in the glycolytic pathway were upregulated, providing the necessary energy and metabolic precursors for SMs biosynthesis. Additionally, key genes in the biosynthesis of PCs (HST, ALDH2C4), Fvs (SHT, FLS/F3H, FaGT6) and CGs (ISPF, TPS, SQS1, IPP2, CYP710A3, SCL14, DWF1) were significantly upregulated in response to MeJA. Other notable effects of MeJA included the regulation of transcription factors (bHLH, MYB, bZIP, WRKY and ERF), which are involved in the biosynthesis of target metabolites. This de novo assembly of T. peruviana transcriptome provides a valuable resource for future research in functional genomics and metabolic engineering of bioactive SMs. Additionally, it offers new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the plant’s response to MeJA, paving the way for targeted strategies to enhance the production of pharmacologically relevant compounds.
Keywords: Thevetia peruviana, Transcriptome, secondary metabolites, Methyljasmonate, Plant Cells
Received: 13 Mar 2025; Accepted: 01 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cuaspud Caliz, Mendoza, Navarro, Arias, Calle, Arcila and Arango Isaza. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Olmedo Jesus Cuaspud Caliz, Facultad de Ciencias, Grupo de Investigación en Biotecnología Vegetal UNALMED - CIB. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Medellin, Colombia
Dary Luz Mendoza, Facultad de Ciencias Basicas, Grupo de Productos Naturales y Bioquímica de Macromoléculas, Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia
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