A series of metabolic and transport genes involved in the nicotine pathway form a regulon under the control of jasmonate-responsive transcription factors in tob

Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) is a widely cultivated crop of the genus Nicotiana. Due to the highly addictive nature of tobacco products, tobacco smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease. There is therefore a critical need to develop tobacco varieties with reduced or non-addictive nicotine levels. Nicotine and related pyridine alkaloids biosynthesized in the roots of tobacco plants are transported to the leaves, where they are stored in vacuoles as a defense against predators. Jasmonate, a defense-related plant hormone, plays a crucial signaling role in activating transcriptional regulators that coordinate the expression of downstream metabolic and transport genes involved in nicotine production. In recent years, substantial progress has been made in molecular and genomics research, revealing many metabolic and regulatory genes involved in nicotine biosynthesis. These advances have enabled us to develop tobacco plants with low or ultra-low nicotine levels through various methodologies, such as mutational breeding, genetic engineering, and genome editing. We review the recent progress on genetic manipulation of nicotine production in tobacco, which serves as an excellent example of plant metabolic engineering with profound social implications.

A Borealin homolog in Arabidopsis functions as a part of the chromosome passenger complex.

The down-regulation of a tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plasma membrane-localized nicotine uptake permease, NUP1, was previously reported to reduce total alkaloid levels in tobacco plants. However, it was unclear how this nicotine transporter affected the biosynthesis of the alkaloid nicotine. When NUP1 expression was suppressed in cultured tobacco cells treated with jasmonate, which induces nicotine biosynthesis, the NICOTINE2-locus transcription factor gene ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR189 (ERF189) and its target structural genes, which function in nicotine biosynthesis and transport, were strongly suppressed, resulting in decreased total alkaloid levels. Conversely, NUP1 overexpression had the opposite effect. In these experiments, the expression levels of the MYC2 transcription factor gene and its jasmonate-inducible target gene were not altered. Inhibiting tobacco alkaloid biosynthesis by suppressing the expression of genes encoding enzymes in the nicotine pathway did not affect the expression of ERF189 and other nicotine pathway genes, indicating that ERF189 is not regulated by cellular alkaloid levels. Suppressing the expression of jasmonate signaling components in cultured tobacco cells showed that NUP1 acts downstream of the CORONATINE INSENSITIVE1 receptor and MYC2, but upstream of ERF189. These results suggest that although jasmonate-activated expression of MYC2 induces the expression of both NUP1 and ERF189, expression of ERF189 may actually be mediated by NUP1. Furthermore, NUP1 overexpression in tobacco plants inhibited the long-range transport of nicotine from the roots to the aerial parts. Thus, NUP1 not only mediates the uptake of tobacco alkaloids into root cells, but also positively controls the expression of ERF189, a key gene in the biosynthesis of these alkaloids.

SUMMARY: In tobacco, the homologous ETHYLENE RESPONSE FACTOR (ERF) transcription factors ERF199 and ERF189 coordinate the transcription of multiple metabolic genes involved in nicotine biosynthesis. Natural alleles at the NIC1 and NIC2 loci greatly affect alkaloid accumulation and overlap with ERF199 and ERF189 in the tobacco genome, respectively. In this study, we identified several low‐nicotine tobacco varieties lacking ERF199 or ERF189 from a tobacco germplasm collection. We characterized the sequence of these new nic1 and nic2 alleles, as well as the previously defined alleles nic1‐1 and nic2‐1. Moreover, we examined the influence of different nic alleles on alkaloid contents and expression levels of genes related to nicotine biosynthesis. We also demonstrated that the deletion of a distal genomic region attenuates ERF199 expression, resulting in a moderately negative effect on the alkaloid phenotype. Our study provides new insights into the regulation of nicotine biosynthesis and novel genetic resources to breed low‐nicotine tobacco.

Complex cell shapes are generated first by breaking symmetry, and subsequent polar growth. Localized bending of anticlinal walls initiates lobe formation in the epidermal pavement cells of cotyledons and leaves, but how the microtubule cytoskeleton mediates local cell growth, and how plant pavement cells benefit from adopting jigsaw puzzle-like shapes, are poorly understood. In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), the basic Pro-rich protein (BPP) microtubule-associated protein family comprises seven members. We analyzed lobe morphogenesis in cotyledon pavement cells of a BPP1;BPP2;BPP5 triple knockout mutant. New image analysis methods (MtCurv and BQuant) showed that anticlinal microtubule bundles were significantly reduced and cortical microtubules that fan out radially across the periclinal wall did not enrich at the convex side of developing lobes. Despite these microtubule defects, new lobes were initiated at the same frequency as in wild-type cells, but they did not expand into well-defined protrusions. Eventually, mutant cells formed nearly polygonal shapes and adopted concentric microtubule patterns. The mutant periclinal cell wall bulged outward. The radius of the calculated inscribed circle of the pavement cells, a proposed proxy for maximal stress in the cell wall, was consistently larger in the mutant cells during cotyledon development, and correlated with an increase in cell height. These bpp mutant phenotypes provide genetic and cell biological evidence that initiation and growth of lobes are distinct morphogenetic processes, and that interdigitated cell geometry effectively suppresses large outward bulging of pavement cells.