Measuring active biosynthesis in plants with isotope labeling

What is it about?

Plants produce many important small molecule natural products that have medicinal properties, and discovery of the biosynthetic genes and reactions for these molecules can be facilitated by determining when and where they are being made in the plant. Because the hydrogen atoms in plant molecules are ultimately derived from water, if plants are grown in deuterated (i.e. heavy isotopic) water, then active biosynthesis can be measured via an increase in relative isotope abundance in a given molecule. In this paper, we incubated three different medicinal plants in deuterated water to determine the sites of active biosynthesis for important compounds with medical importance.

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Why is it important?

One of the major bottlenecks for the discovery of biosynthesis in plants is the difficulty in working with non-model species, including many non-model plants. Here, we have shown that active biosynthesis of medicinal compounds can be measured over relatively short time scales (several weeks) using an affordable isotope labeling system (heavy water). This knowledge can then be used in future transcriptomic and metabolomic studies that seek to understand the biosynthetic reactions that produce these molecules.