Exogenous Melatonin Promotes Glucoraphanin Biosynthesis by Mediating Glutathione in Hairy Roots of Broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica Planch)

Jinyu Bao; Jie Yang; Xu Lu; Lei Ma; Xiaotong Shi; Shimin Lan; Yi Zhao; Jie Cao; Shaoying Ma; Sheng Li

doi:10.3390/plants13010106

Exogenous Melatonin Promotes Glucoraphanin Biosynthesis by Mediating Glutathione in Hairy Roots of Broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica Planch)

Plants (Basel). 2023 Dec 29;13(1):106. doi: 10.3390/plants13010106.

Authors

Jinyu Bao^{1

2}, Jie Yang³, Xu Lu², Lei Ma¹, Xiaotong Shi³, Shimin Lan³, Yi Zhao³, Jie Cao³, Shaoying Ma⁴, Sheng Li^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
² College of Horticulture, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
³ College of Life Science and Technology, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
⁴ Laboratory and Practice Base Management Center, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China.

Abstract

To investigate the mechanism of melatonin (MT)-mediated glutathione (GSH) in promoting glucoraphanin (GRA) and sulforaphane (SF) synthesis, the gene expression pattern and protein content of hairy broccoli roots under MT treatment were analyzed by a combination of RNA-seq and tandem mass spectrometry tagging (TMT) techniques in this study. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis revealed that both proteins and mRNAs with the same expression trend were enriched in the "Glutathione metabolism (ko00480)" and "Proteasome (ko03050)" pathways, and most of the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) regulating the two pathways were downregulated. The results showed that endogenous GSH concentration and GR activity were increased in hairy roots after MT treatment. Exogenous GSH could promote the biosynthesis of GRA and SF, and both exogenous MT and GSH could upregulate the expression of the GSTF11 gene related to the sulfur transport gene, thus promoting the biosynthesis of GRA. Taken together, this study provides a new perspective to explore the complex molecular mechanisms of improving GRA and SF synthesis levels by MT and GSH regulation.

Keywords: glucoraphanin; glutathione; hairy roots; melatonin; sulforaphane; sulfur transport.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the State Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science of China (GSCS-2023-14) (Jinyu Bao); Technology Innovation Guiding Program—Small and Medium Enterprises Innovation Fund (2022-0301-GXC-0192) (Sheng Li); National Natural Science Foundation of China (31860067) (Sheng Li).