Dissection of flag leaf metabolic shifts and their relationship with those occurring simultaneously in developing seed by application of non-targeted metabolomics

Abstract

Rice flag leaves are major source organs providing more than half of the nutrition needed for rice seed development. The dynamic metabolic changes in rice flag leaves and the detailed metabolic relationship between source and sink organs in rice, however, remain largely unknown. In this study, the metabolic changes of flag leaves in two japonica and two indica rice cultivars were investigated using non-targeted metabolomics approach. Principal component analysis (PCA) revealed that flag leaf metabolomes varied significantly depending on both species and developmental stage. Only a few of the metabolites in flag leaves displayed the same change pattern across the four tested cultivars along the process of seed development. Further association analysis found that levels of 45 metabolites in seeds that are associated with human nutrition and health correlated significantly with their levels in flag leaves. Comparison of metabolomics of flag leaves and seeds revealed that some flavonoids were specific or much higher in flag leaves while some lipid metabolites such as phospholipids were much higher in seeds. This reflected not only the function of the tissue specific metabolism but also the different physiological properties and metabolic adaptive features of these two tissues.

Productivity of Benggala grass (Panicum maximum) at different ages of oil palm

“…Meanwhile, the length and width of the flag leaf of the Hamil cultivar are longer than other cultivars. The width of the flag leaf in each cultivar is more varied than the length of the flag leaf, this happens, because the width of the flag leaf is a physiological response of a plant to shade stress [18].…”

Morphological Characteristics and Nutritional Quality of Mutant Benggala Grass (Panicum maximum cv Purple Guinea) Generation M1V3

“…The flag leaf characteristic is associated with the production of cereal crops (Al-Tahir, 2014). In addition, flag leaves are also related to the developmental metabolites of a plant (Hu et al, 2020). The grouping of plants on PC2 based on specific characteristics is expected to focus more on specific genotypes/clones to be selected as superior clones.…”

Investigating the Resistance Mechanism of Wheat Varieties to Fusarium Head Blight Using Comparative Metabolomics

“…Metabolite identification and peak area extraction were performed as described previously [ 53 ]. Briefly, the metabolites were annotated by searching the Personal Compound Database and Library (PCD/PCDL) [ 54 ], and the Massbank [ 55 ] and Metlin [ 56 ] databases based on two criteria: (1) the difference between the observed mass and the theoretical mass was less than 5 ppm; (2) the main feature of the observed MS/MS spectrums was the same to that in literatures or database.…”

“…The missing values in the sample were filled with the minimum value of each metabolite detected in other samples with the same treatment, assuming that the null value was due to the concentration of the metabolite in some samples being less than the detection limit of the instrument [ 53 ]. The peak area of each sample was divided by the median value of the compound across all samples, and the relative value was obtained for later data analysis.…”