Identification of a BAHD acetyltransferase that produces protective acyl sugars in tomato trichomes
Edited by Richard A. Dixon, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ardmore, OK, and approved August 23, 2012 (received for review May 10, 2012)
Abstract
Glandular secreting trichomes on the surface of tomato plants and many of its relatives in the Solanaceae produce a mixture of O-acyl sugars that contribute to insect resistance. The majority of acyl sucroses produced by the cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) contain three or four short chain aliphatic acyl esters, and tetra-acyl sucroses have an acetyl group as one of the acyl chains. We previously reported overlapping S. lycopersicum × Solanum pennellii introgression lines (ILs) that fail to accumulate high levels of acetylated tetra-acyl sucroses. A survey of the annotated genes in this region of cultivated tomato chromosome 1 revealed three candidate acyltransferases that were tested for function using virus-induced gene silencing. A member of the BAHD family of acyltransferases (Solyc01g105580, SlAT2) was shown to encode an acetyl-CoA–dependent acyltransferase enzyme capable of acyl sucrose acetylation in vitro. RNAi suppression of SlAT2 in transgenic S. lycopersicum cv. M82 resulted in reduced acyl sugar acetylation, whereas expression of the functional S. lycopersicum allele of SlAT2 in the triacyl sucrose producing IL1-3 restored the ability of the IL to synthesize acetylated tetra-acyl sugars. Transgenic plants with the SlAT2 promoter driving GFP expression showed fluorescence in tips cells of long, slender trichomes that is consistent with acyl sugar acetylation occurring in these cells.
Data Availability
Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database [accession nos. JQ899257–JQ899262 (SlAT1, SlAT2, SlAT3, SpAT1, SpAT2, and SpAT3, respectively) and JQ975012 (SlAT2 promoter region)].
Acknowledgments
We thank members of the Solanum Trichome Project for their contributions during the project, especially Claire Taylor and Karin Hanisch for help with tomato transformation; Alisdair Fernie and Bjoern Usadel for providing S. pennellii genome sequence; and Shin-Han Shiu for help preparing the BAHD phylogeny. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants DBI-0604336 and IOS-1025636.
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Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Data Availability
Data deposition: The sequences reported in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank database [accession nos. JQ899257–JQ899262 (SlAT1, SlAT2, SlAT3, SpAT1, SpAT2, and SpAT3, respectively) and JQ975012 (SlAT2 promoter region)].
Submission history
Published online: September 17, 2012
Published in issue: October 2, 2012
Acknowledgments
We thank members of the Solanum Trichome Project for their contributions during the project, especially Claire Taylor and Karin Hanisch for help with tomato transformation; Alisdair Fernie and Bjoern Usadel for providing S. pennellii genome sequence; and Shin-Han Shiu for help preparing the BAHD phylogeny. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grants DBI-0604336 and IOS-1025636.
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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