Endomicrobiome of in vitro and natural plants deciphering the endophytes-associated secondary metabolite biosynthesis in Picrorhiza kurrooa, a Himalayan medicinal herb

IMPORTANCE

Picrorhiza kurrooa is a major source of picrosides, potent hepatoprotective molecules. Due to the ever-increasing demands, overexploitation has caused an extensive decline in its population in the wild and placed it in the endangered plants' category. At present plant in-vitro systems are widely used for the sustainable generation of P. kurrooa plants, and also for the conservation of other commercially important, rare, endangered, and threatened plant species. Furthermore, the in-vitro-generated plants had reduced content of therapeutic secondary metabolites compared to their wild counterparts, and the reason behind, not well-explored. Here, we revealed the loss of plant-associated endophytic communities during in-vitro propagation of P. kurrooa plants which also correlated to in-planta secondary metabolite biosynthesis. Therefore, this study emphasized to consider the essential role of plant-associated endophytic communities in in-vitro practices which may be the possible reason for reduced secondary metabolites in in-vitro plants.

Modular Design of Picroside-II Biosynthesis Deciphered through NGS Transcriptomes and Metabolic Intermediates Analysis in Naturally Variant Chemotypes of a Medicinal Herb, Picrorhiza kurroa

Picroside-II (P-II), an iridoid glycoside, is used as an active ingredient of various commercial herbal formulations available for the treatment of liver ailments. Despite this, the knowledge of P-II biosynthesis remains scarce owing to its negligence in Picrorhiza kurroa shoots which sets constant barrier for function validation experiments. In this study, we utilized natural variation for P-II content in stolon tissues of different P. kurroa accessions and deciphered its metabolic route by integrating metabolomics of intermediates with differential NGS transcriptomes. Upon navigating through high vs. low P-II content accessions (1.3-2.6%), we have established that P-II is biosynthesized via degradation of ferulic acid (FA) to produce vanillic acid (VA) which acts as its immediate biosynthetic precursor. Moreover, the FA treatment in vitro at 150 μM concentration provided further confirmation with 2-fold rise in VA content. Interestingly, the cross-talk between different compartments of P. kurroa, i.e., shoots and stolons, resolved spatial complexity of P-II biosynthesis and consequently speculated the burgeoning necessity to bridge gap between VA and P-II production in P. kurroa shoots. This work thus, offers a forward looking strategy to produce both P-I and P-II in shoot cultures, a step toward providing a sustainable production platform for these medicinal compounds via-à-vis relieving pressure from natural habitat of P. kurroa.

A proposed biosynthetic pathway of picrosides linked through the detection of biochemical intermediates in the endangered medicinal herb Picrorhiza kurroa

INTRODUCTION

Picrorhiza kurroa Royle ex Benth is an important medicinal herb used in the preparation of several herbal drug formulations due to the presence of picroside-I (P-I) and picroside-II (P-II) along with other iridoid-glucosides derivatives.

OBJECTIVE

The endangered status of P. kurroa coupled with lack of information on biosynthesis of P-I and P-II necessitate deciphering the biosynthetic pathway for picrosides.

METHODS

LC with electrospray ionisation (ESI) and quadrupole time of flight combined with MS/MS was used to detect intermediates and assemble the picrosides biosynthetic pathway in P. kurroa.

RESULTS

The presence of catalpol and aucubin, the major backbone structures of picrosides, along with intermediate metabolites boschnaloside, bartsioside and mussaenosidic acid, was confirmed in ESI negative mode with pseudomolecular ion peaks, that is, m/z 361, m/z 343, m/z 345, m/z 329 and m/z 375 ions and their fragmentation patterns.

CONCLUSION

The picrosides biosynthetic pathway is expected to provide a reliable platform towards understanding the molecular components (genes/enzymes) of P-I and P-II biosynthesis in P. kurroa for their eventual utilisation in various applications.

De novo sequencing and characterization of Picrorhiza kurrooa transcriptome at two temperatures showed major transcriptome adjustments

BACKGROUND

Picrorhiza kurrooa Royle ex Benth. is an endangered plant species of medicinal importance. The medicinal property is attributed to monoterpenoids picroside I and II, which are modulated by temperature. The transcriptome information of this species is limited with the availability of few hundreds of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in the public databases. In order to gain insight into temperature mediated molecular changes, high throughput de novo transcriptome sequencing and analyses were carried out at 15 °C and 25 °C, the temperatures known to modulate picrosides content.

RESULTS

Using paired-end (PE) Illumina sequencing technology, a total of 20,593,412 and 44,229,272 PE reads were obtained after quality filtering for 15 °C and 25 °C, respectively. Available (e.g., De-Bruijn/Eulerian graph) and in-house developed bioinformatics tools were used for assembly and annotation of transcriptome. A total of 74,336 assembled transcript sequences were obtained, with an average coverage of 76.6 and average length of 439.5. Guanine-cytosine (GC) content was observed to be 44.6%, while the transcriptome exhibited abundance of trinucleotide simple sequence repeat (SSR; 45.63%) markers.Large scale expression profiling through "read per exon kilobase per million (RPKM)", showed changes in several biological processes and metabolic pathways including cytochrome P450s (CYPs), UDP-glycosyltransferases (UGTs) and those associated with picrosides biosynthesis. RPKM data were validated by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction using a set of 19 genes, wherein 11 genes behaved in accordance with the two expression methods.

CONCLUSIONS

Study generated transcriptome of P. kurrooa at two different temperatures. Large scale expression profiling through RPKM showed major transcriptome changes in response to temperature reflecting alterations in major biological processes and metabolic pathways, and provided insight of GC content and SSR markers. Analysis also identified putative CYPs and UGTs that could help in discovering the hitherto unknown genes associated with picrosides biosynthesis.