title: Metabolite fingerprinting of pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.) embryos to assess active pathways during oil synthesis.
abstract: Pennycress (Thlaspi arvense L.), a plant naturalized to North America, accumulates high levels of erucic acid in its seeds, which makes it a promising biodiesel and industrial crop. The main carbon sinks in pennycress embryos were found to be proteins, fatty acids, and cell wall, which respectively represented 38.5, 33.2, and 27.0% of the biomass at 21 days after pollination. Erucic acid reached a maximum of 36% of the total fatty acids. Together these results indicate that total oil and erucic acid contents could be increased to boost the economic competitiveness of this crop. Understanding the biochemical basis of oil synthesis in pennycress embryos is therefore timely and relevant to guide future breeding and/or metabolic engineering efforts. For this purpose, a combination of metabolomics approaches was conducted to assess the active biochemical pathways during oil synthesis. First, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) profiling of intracellular metabolites highlighted three main families of compounds: organic acids, amino acids, and sugars/sugar alcohols. Secondly, these intermediates were quantified in developing pennycress embryos by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) in multiple reaction monitoring mode. Finally, partitional clustering analysis grouped the intracellular metabolites that shared a similar pattern of accumulation over time into eight clusters. This study underlined that: (i) sucrose might be stored rather than cleaved into hexoses; (ii) glucose and glutamine would be the main sources of carbon and nitrogen, respectively; and (iii) glycolysis, the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and the Calvin cycle were active in developing pennycress embryos.
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, Department of Molecular Genetics, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Enkhtuul
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Tsogtbaatar
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, Department of Molecular Genetics, Columbus, OH 43210, USA The Ohio State University, Center for Applied Plant Sciences, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.
authors.forename: Jean-Christophe
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Cocuron
authors.affiliation: University of Puerto Rico, Mechanical Engineering Department, Mayagüez, 00681-9000, Puerto Rico.
authors.forename: Marcos Corchado
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Sonera
authors.affiliation: The Ohio State University, Department of Molecular Genetics, Columbus, OH 43210, USA alonso.19@osu.edu.
authors.forename: Ana Paula
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Alonso
mesh_terms: D010938:Plant Oils / Q000378:metabolism*; D012639:Seeds / Q000378:metabolism*; D031227:Thlaspi / Q000196:embryology / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D010938:Plant Oils
keywords: Alternative crop; GC-MS; LC-MS/MS; Thlaspi arvense L.; erucic acid; jet fuel; metabolomics; oilseed; pennycress; plant metabolism; triacylglycerols.