Systematical accumulating and regulating evaluations of leaf functional metabolites in geographically isolated edible medicinal plants of Piper sarmentosum

• Published in: Journal of plant physiology Vol. 310; p. 154512
• Main Authors: Ziting, Liu, Xiaoqing, Wu, Kemei, Wang, Yachao, Bai, Aimin, Guo, Huang, Linan, Bin, Liao, Jun, Zhang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Elsevier GmbH 01.07.2025
• Subjects: China; Functional metabolites; Leaf metabolomes; Leaf transcriptomes; Leaf-assembled bacterial communites; Metabolome; Piper - genetics; Piper - metabolism; Piper - microbiology; Piper sarmentosum Roxb; Plant Leaves - metabolism; Plant Leaves - microbiology; Plants, Edible - metabolism; Plants, Medicinal - genetics; Plants, Medicinal - metabolism; Plants, Medicinal - microbiology; Transcriptome; China; Functional metabolites; Leaf transcriptomes; Leaf-assembled bacterial communites; Piper sarmentosum Roxb; Leaf metabolomes
• ISSN: 0176-1617; 1618-1328; 1618-1328
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jplph.2025.154512

The edible medicinal plant Piper sarmentosum is widely distributed in south China. This study raised a hypothesis of geographically isolated P. sarmentosum plants possessing potential site- or/and plant-dependent accumulating metabolites, expressing genes, and colonizing bacteria. Here, P. sarmentosum plants of Guangzhou City (PG, comparison group) and Hainan Island (PH, control group) were collected for assaying leaf metabolomes (LMs), leaf transcriptomes (LTs), and leaf-assembled bacterial communities (LABCs), respectively. In LMs and LTs, 930 metabolites and 82,606 unigenes were identified with 552 differently accumulated metabolites (DAMs) and 28,177 differently expressed genes (DEGs), respectively. In LABCs, cluster analysis yielded 822 PG-PH-common, 1114 PG-unique, and 203 PH-unique operational taxonomic units (OTUs). In contrast of PH-LMs, the elevated accumulations of alkaloids and lipids and the decreased accumulations of flavonoids and phenolic acids were observed in PG-LMs. Typically, the DAMs and DEGs were co-enriched in two metabolic pathways of phenylpropanoids and flavonoids, visibly displaying the related DEGs, such as chalcone synthase (CHS), chalcone isomerase (CHI) and phenylalanine amino lyase (PAL), with regulating the functional DAMs, such as phenylalanine, tyrosine, p-coumaric acid, and naringenin. Noticeably, these DAMs were also significantly correlated with a number of different types or/and abundances of leaf-assembled bacteria (DTAB) between PG- and PH-LABCs, such as Flavobacterium and Pseudomonas. Therefore, this study clearly elucidated the functional metabolite accumulations and the close relationships with plant mRNA expressions and bacterial colonizations in geographically isolated plants of P. sarmentosum, providing new insight of selectively utilizing leaf food- and medicine-associated metabolites in different habitats of edible medicinal plants. [Display omitted] •Piper sarmentosum is a typical edible and medicinal plant in south China.•Geographically isolated plants were assayed with leaf multiomics.•PH and PG plants presented the various metabolite accumulations.•Specific metabolic pathways co-enriched PH/PG DAMs and DEGs.•Functional DAMs were significantly correlated with beneficial DTAB.