Integrating metabolomics and high-throughput phenotyping to elucidate metabolic and phenotypic responses to early-season drought stress in Nordic spring wheat.

Background: Understanding the metabolic responses of wheat to drought stress is essential for developing strategies to enhance its resilience under water-deficit conditions. In this study, we investigated the metabolic and phenotypic responses of twelve Nordic spring wheat genotypes subjected to drought stress over 28 days in a high-throughput phenotyping facility. By integrating metabolic profiling with phenotypic assessments, we aimed to identify key metabolites and traits associated with drought tolerance.

Data management in balance - a decade of balancing pragmatism, sustainability and innovation at plant research center IPK Gatersleben.

The Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) Gatersleben is a leading international plant science institute specializing in biodiversity and crop plant performance research. Over the last decade, all phases of the research data lifecycle were implemented as a continuous process in conjunction with information technology, standardization, and sustainable research data management (RDM) processes. Under the leadership of a team of data stewards, a research data infrastructure, process landscape, capacity building, and governance structures were successfully established.

Efficient -Mediated Methods for Transient and Stable Transformation in Common and Tartary Buckwheat.

Buckwheat is a promising crop with grains that are rich in nutrients and bioactive compounds. Genome sequence data for common and Tartary buckwheat have recently become available. Currently, there is a critical need for the development of a simple and reliable transient gene expression protocol, as well as a stable genetic transformation method, to facilitate metabolic engineering of bioactive compounds, functional analysis of genes, targeted editing, and, in a long-term perspective, to accelerate the breeding process in buckwheat.

The evolution of tropane alkaloids: Coca does it differently.

It is undeniable that tropane alkaloids (TAs) have been both beneficial and detrimental to human health in the modern era. Understanding their biosynthesis is vital for using synthetic biology to engineer organisms for pharmaceutical production. The most parsimonious approaches to pathway elucidation are traditionally homology-based methods.

A New Fluorescence Detection Method for Tryptophan- and Tyrosine-Derived Allelopathic Compounds in Barley and Lupin.

Barley () is one of the most widely cultivated crops for feedstock and beer production, whereas lupins ( spp.) are grown as fodder and their seeds are a source of protein. Both species produce the allelopathic alkaloids gramine and hordenine.

Metabolic Profiling Identifies Changes in the Winter Wheat Grains Following Treatment at Two Locations in Croatia.

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is one of the most dangerous diseases of winter wheat, resulting in reduced grain yield and quality, and production of mycotoxins by the fungi. In the present study, changes in the grain metabolomics of winter wheat samples infected with spp. and corresponding non-infected samples from two locations in Croatia were investigated by GC-MS.

The last step in cocaine biosynthesis is catalyzed by a BAHD acyltransferase.

The esterification of methylecgonine (2-carbomethoxy-3β-tropine) with benzoic acid is the final step in the biosynthetic pathway leading to the production of cocaine in Erythoxylum coca. Here we report the identification of a member of the BAHD family of plant acyltransferases as cocaine synthase. The enzyme is capable of producing both cocaine and cinnamoylcocaine via the activated benzoyl- or cinnamoyl-Coenzyme A thioesters, respectively.

Learning from nature: new approaches to the metabolic engineering of plant defense pathways.

Biotechnological manipulation of plant defense pathways can increase crop resistance to herbivores and pathogens while also increasing yields of medicinal, industrial, flavor and fragrance compounds. The most successful achievements in engineering defense pathways can be attributed to researchers striving to imitate natural plant regulatory mechanisms. For example, the introduction of transcription factors that control several genes in one pathway is often a valuable strategy to increase flux in that pathway.

Plant tropane alkaloid biosynthesis evolved independently in the Solanaceae and Erythroxylaceae.

The pharmacologically important tropane alkaloids have a scattered distribution among angiosperm families, like many other groups of secondary metabolites. To determine whether tropane alkaloids have evolved repeatedly in different lineages or arise from an ancestral pathway that has been lost in most lines, we investigated the tropinone-reduction step of their biosynthesis. In species of the Solanaceae, which produce compounds such as atropine and scopolamine, this reaction is known to be catalyzed by enzymes of the short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase family.