Tannin genes

[Sebastian S. Cocioba]

Any clue on the sequence of tannin producing genes? In working with mimosa pudica atm and have a hunch about tannins in the pulvini cells and their relation to mechanosensory responses. I want to silence the genes for tannin production and see if that shuts off movement. Ill do a genbank search in tandem but was curious as to the group's thoughts on the matter.

Sebastian S Cocioba
CEO & Founder
New York Botanics, LLC

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[Patrik D'haeseleer]

"Tannin" is a very generic term, and can refer to any of a wide range of different polyphenols. Tannin production is presumably closely linked to lignin biosynthesis in plants, and there's literally dozens of genes involved in that.

Could you tell us a bit more where your hunch is coming from? That might narrow down which tannins and which genes are involved.

Patrik

[Dakota]

Very cool!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa_pudica

I had to look up the latin name but those weeping ferns are familiar, have seen a few around.  It's always neat when the way an organism behaves still isn't fully understood.   Be interested to see what you can find out.

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Evan Parker <epar...@gmail.com> wrote:

One if the few questions here I've felt qualified to comment on, tannins are actually a broad class of compounds (you probably know this). Perhaps you could deactivate the production of Gallic acid, or maybe of catechin/epicatechin. Both if these are well characterized metabolites necessary for the production of complex tannins. AFAIK the production of large tannic avid polymers or proanthocyanins is poorly understood even though there are indicators of enzymatic control.

On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 12:59:23 PM UTC-8, Sebastian wrote:

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[Sebastian S. Cocioba]

Im hitting the books on any known tannin biosynthesis pathway in M. Pudica and maybe find the ID of the theorized tannin that controls one aspect of the mechanically induced turgor pressure loss. Just excising the cells and maintaining a stable culture of pulvini cells is a pain but Ive got some progress. Eventually I would like to isolate and somehow cassette the genes required for mechanoreception. Think touch and glow :) Ambitious goal but interesting nonetheless. I see everyone and their mother focusing on glowing plants but far less on movement. 

Sebastian S Cocioba

CEO & Founder

New York Botanics, LLC

Sent via Mobile E-Mail 

[Ben Hunt]

There is a wonderful, accessible, online tool for solving this problem! It is called Metacyc. It has nice metabolic pathway tools. It makes you imagine that you could make anything out of carbon dioxide and sunlight.

The most complete tannin pathway seems to be the gallotannins.

I used it for the capsaicin biosynthesis pathway. I wish you great luck that you can use genetic and pathway information to effect a change in phenotype!

Should you find a great deal more information on tannin pathway information squirreled away in a university basement library, please let the curators know!

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

Sounds like this is one of the key references for you:

The enzyme involved in sulfation of the turgorin, gallic acid 4-O-(beta-D-glucopyranosyl-6'-sulfate) is pulvini-localized in Mimosa pudica.

The title really says it all: the tannin involved is a sulfated gallic acid glucoside, and one of the key sulfotransferase enzymes is located in the muscle cells.

Here's another excellent overview:

Mechanical and electrical anisotropy in Mimosa pudica pulvini

Patrik

PS: I love Metacyc - use it daily in my day job! But you're going to be hard pressed to find some of these oddball pathways in any reference pathway databases...

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

 Looks like the Mimosa genes are not known yet - no big surprise there. Here's a paper on sulfotransferases in Arabidopsis:

The multi-protein family of Arabidopsis sulphotransferases and their relatives in other plant species.

http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/404/1809.long

If you take the sequences in this paper and blast them against Mimosa, you get... zip, nada. Again, no surprise because there's only a total of 89 protein sequences for Mimosa in the databases (and only 36 for M. pudica). But if you blast agains the whole pea family (Fabaceae), including from soy bean etc. If you're lucky, one of those might be a gallic acid glucoside sulfotransferase, but figuring out which one may not be an easily DIYable project...

[Patrik D'haeseleer]

That should have read "But if you blast agains the whole pea family (Fabaceae), you get a whole bunch of hits, including from soy bean etc."