Evolution of Secondary Plant Metabolism

Michael Wink, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Published online: December 2008

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0001922.pub2

The biosynthesis of secondary metabolites (SM), which are important for the fitness of the plants as defence and signal compounds, occurs universally in higher plants and shows very high structural diversity. Their evolution in higher plants rests on variation in the enzymatic manipulation of a relatively small number of primary precursors. Evidence is presented that at least some of the genes encoding key enzymes of biosynthesis probably have reached plants by ancient horizontal gene transfer (HGT), for example from protobacteria or cyanobacteria which later became mitochondria and plastids. Another source of SM can be ectomycorrhizal and endophytic fungi; they can directly provide plants with defence compounds or might have transferred their pathway genes into the genome of their host plants times ago.

Keywords: secondary metabolites; distribution; evolutionary changes; horizontal gene transfer

Figure 1. The evolution of five different classes of alkaloid from a common amino acid precursor, tyrosine. A given symbol always indicates the same carbon throughout the reaction scheme.
Figure 2. Distribution of 1-btiq alkaloids in angiosperms mapped on a phylogenetic framework (APG II). Branches in which 1-btiq are produced are printed in black and bold.
Figure 3. Distribution of quinolizidine (QA) and pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) in angiosperms mapped on a phylogenetic framework (APG II). Branches in which QA are produced are printed in blue, those with PA in red.
Figure 4. Molecular phylogeny of PAL (a) and CHS (b) inferred from derived amino acid sequences of the corresponding genes. After Wink et al. (2009), with permission from Wiley-Blackwell.
Figure 5. Phylogeny of strictosidine synthase (STS) (a) and berberine bridge enzyme (BBE) (b) inferred from derived amino acid sequences. Taxa, which produce respective alkaloids are marked by an arrow and printed in bold. After Wink et al. (2009), with permission from Wiley-Blackwell.
Figure 6. Hypothetical scheme for the evolution of secondary metabolism in plants.
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 Further Reading
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    Reynolds T (2007) The evolution of chemosystematics. Phytochemistry 68: 2887–2895.
    Waterman PG (2007) The current status of chemical systematics. Phytochemistry 68: 2896–2903.
    Zenk MH and Juenge M (2007) Evolution and current status of the phytochemistry of nitrogenous compounds. Phytochemistry 65: 2757–2772.

Related Sub-Topics:

Molecular Evolution | Evolution of Coding and Functional Modules | Plant Evolution | Plant Secondary Metabolism
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Article Title: Evolution of Secondary Plant Metabolism
 
How to Cite close
Wink, Michael(Dec 2008) Evolution of Secondary Plant Metabolism. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0001922.pub2]