Phytohormone profiling in an evolutionary framework

Abstract

Multiple phytohormones act as conserved developmental regulators in land plants. Although the closely related streptophyte green algae typically lack full complements of molecular pathways underlying these responses, scattered reports of endogenous phytohormone production in these organisms exist. In this study, we performed a detailed LC/MS-based analysis of several phytohormones, their precursors and metabolites in all lineages of streptophyte algae. We also included chlorophyte algae and early-diverging land plants as outgroups. Free auxin, tRNA-derived cytokinins and certain phenolics including salicylic acid were found ubiquitously. However, land plants differed from green algae by the consistent detection of abscisic acid and the presence of auxin and cytokinin conjugates and trans-zeatin, supporting the hypotheses that these three phytohormones likely came to regulate development in the ancestral land plant. By contrast, we observed a patchy distribution of jasmonates among streptophytes. We additionaly analyzed the corresponding culture and empty media to account for phytohormone excretion and environmental contamination. Extracellular auxins and cytokinins were frequently detected, while agar constituted a major external source of phenolic compounds. We provide a highly comprehensive evolution-directed screen of phytohormone compound occurrence and thoroughly discuss our data in the context of current plant hormonomics and phylogenomics. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT O_FIG O_LINKSMALLFIG WIDTH=200 HEIGHT=143 SRC="FIGDIR/small/534998v1_ufig1.gif" ALT="Figure 1"> View larger version (52K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1532f4org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1c4396borg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@195d0eborg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@c71b11_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG