Research article2017Peer reviewed
Changes in the expression of key genes involved in the biosynthesis of menthol and menthofuran in Mentha piperita L. under drought stress
Rahimi, Yousef; Taleei, Alireza; Ranjbar, Mojtaba
Abstract
Peppermint (Mentha piperita) is known as an important medicinal plant throughout the world. In the present study, after exposing peppermint plants under drought stress, the qRT-PCR was use to analyze the expression of genes involved in menthol biosynthesis pathway and encoding: limonene synthase (lS), limon-3-hydroxylase (l3oh), trans-isopiperitenol dehydrogenase (ipd), isopiperitenone reductase (ipr), pulegone reductase (pr), menthol dehydrogenase (mdeh), and menthofuran synthase (mfs), which also evaluated the morphological and physiological traits. The results revealed that due to water stress, the gene expression levels of ipd, ipr, and mfs were increased, whereas the gene expression level of pr and mdeh was decreased under water stress conditions. The most of essential oil components (menthol, menthofuran, and plugene), which were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), was positively correlated with genes expression. Drought stress decreased morphological and induces increasing contents of pulegone and menthofuran and reduction in menthol percentages. Results from this study suggest that up-regulation of mfs might contribute to the altered of menthofuran as well as down-regulation of mdeh might cause the reduction of menthol. Furthermore, increasing ls gene expression levels might induce more essential oil yield, while reduction of mfs gene expression levels causes an improvement of essential oil quality.
Keywords
Peppermint; Gene expression; Menthol; Drought stress; Menthofuran
Published in
Acta Physiologiae Plantarum
2017, Volume: 39, number: 9, article number: 203
UKÄ Subject classification
Horticulture
Plant Biotechnology
Publication identifier
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-017-2502-x
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/123515