GENOMIC ANALYSIS OF THE STILBENE SYNTHASE GENE FAMILY THROUGH THE ELICITATION OF GRAPE CELL CULTURES

CHIALVA, CS; ALMAGRO, L; BELCHI-NAVARRO, S; BRU, R; MARTINEZ-ZAPATER, JM; PEDRENO, MA; LIJAVETZKY, D

San Luis

Congreso; XLVII Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2011

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Bioquímica y Biología Molecular

Resveratrol is a phytoalexin produced naturally by grapevine and other few plants when under different biotic and abiotic stress. Stilbene synthase (STS), the key enzyme in resveratrol biosynthesis, is codified by a gene family with about 40 similar members distributed in just two clusters on grapevine chromosomes 10 and 16. Our main goal is to determine if the different biotic and abiotic factors inducing resveratrol production regulate the different STS genes in a redundant or specific way. To do so, we are characterizing the STS gene family in terms of structure and number of genes as well as their different expression patterns. Moreover, we have performed a microarray analysis using the GrapeGen Affymetrix GeneChip on grape cell suspensions that accumulate high levels of stilbenoids in response to the presence of cyclodextrin (CD), methyl-jasmonate (MeJa) or both elicitors. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) showed that more that 70% of the global variation is explained by a principal component (PC1, 51%) determined by the synergistic gene regulation under the combined treatment, while a second component (PC2, 20%) is determined by the individual effect of MeJa. Focusing on the STS genes, we observed that the 15 members represented in the chip showed a common induction in the combined treatment while significant differences were detected in the individual treatments.