Role of female-predominant MYB39-bHLH13 complex in sexually dimorphic accumulation of taxol in Taxus media

Abstract

Taxus trees are major natural sources for the extraction of taxol, a worldwide used anti-cancer agent. Taxus media is a dioecious woody tree with high taxol yield. However, the sexually dimorphic accumulation of taxoids in T. media is largely unknown. Our study revealed high accumulation of taxoids in the female T. media trees using a UPLC-MS/MS method. Thereafter, many differential metabolites and genes between female and male T. media trees were identified using metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses, respectively. Most of the taxol-related genes predominantly expressed in the female trees. A female-specific R2R3-MYB transcription factor, TmMYB39, was identified. Furthermore, BiFC and Y2H assays suggested the potential interaction between TmMYB39 and TmbHLH13. Several taxol biosynthesis-related promoter sequences were isolated and used for the screening of MYB recognition elements. EMSA analysis indicated that TmMYB39 could bind to the promoters of the GGPPS, T10OH, T13OH, and TBT genes. Interaction between TmMYB39 and TmbHLH13 trans-activated the expression of the GGPPS and T10OH genes. TmMYB39 might function in the transcriptional regulation of taxol biosynthesis through a “MYB-bHLH” module. Our results gave a potential explanation for the sexually dimorphic biosynthesis of taxol in T. media.

Integrated mass spectrometry imaging and single‐cell transcriptome atlas strategies provide novel insights into taxoid biosynthesis and transport in Taxus mairei stems

“…The taxol biosynthesis pathway is controlled by several environmental and genetic factors (Feng et al., 2023; Yu et al., 2020; Yu et al., 2022; Zhan et al., 2022). Recent studies on taxol biosynthesis regulators mainly focused on stimulus‐responsive TFs (Cao et al., 2022; Chen, Zhang, et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2015).…”

“…Previously, the roles of T. media MYB39 / MYB3 and T. chinensis MYB29a in regulating taxol biosynthesis were identified (Cao et al., 2022; Yu et al., 2022). Our downstream target screening showed several different TF–target pairs, such as TmMYB3– TS , TmMYB3– TBT , TmMYB39– GGPPS , TmMYB39– T10OH , and TcMYB29a– T5OH .…”

“…Moreover, several transcription factors (TFs) are reportedly involved in the regulation of taxol biosynthesis (Kuang et al., 2019). In Taxus media , the MYB39–bHLH13 TF complex has key roles in the sexual dimorphic accumulation of taxol (Yu et al., 2022). In Taxus chinensis , MYB29a is an activator of abscisic acid (ABA)‐mediated taxol biosynthesis and WRKY33 is a repressor of salicylic acid (SA)‐mediated taxol biosynthesis (Cao et al., 2022; Chen, Zhang, et al., 2021).…”

Genome-wide identification and expression analysis of TCP family genes in Catharanthus roseus

“…TFs regulated gene expression at the transcriptional level by binding to different cis -acting elements ( Yu et al., 2022a ; Zhan et al., 2022 ; Feng et al., 2023 ). A series of regulatory elements have been identified in the promoter region of TCP genes, including growth-related elements, stress-responsive elements, and hormone signaling-related elements ( Feng et al., 2018 ).…”

Intergrated Transcriptomic and Proteomic Analysis Revealed the Differential Responses to Novel Duck Reovirus Infection in the Bursa of Fabricius of Cairna moschata

“…All clean reads were mapped onto the reference sequence to form contigs, which were estimated and assembled to form unigenes. All unigenes were checked against several databases, Nr (non-redundant), Swiss-Prot (a manually annotated and reviewed protein sequence database), Pfam (protein family), KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes), and COG (Clusters of Ortholog Groups) with a cutoff E value of 0.00001 [ 25 ].…”