Change in Bitterness, Accumulation of Cucurbitacin B and Expression Patterns of Cub Biosynthesis-Related Genes in Melon During Fruit Development
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The Horticulture Journal 88 (2): 253–262. 2019. e Japanese Society for doi: 10.2503/hortj.UTD-004 JSHS Horticultural Science http://www.jshs.jp/ Change in Bitterness, Accumulation of Cucurbitacin B and Expression Patterns of CuB Biosynthesis-related Genes in Melon During Fruit Development Deping Hua1*, Jinyu Fu1, Li Liu2, Xuhui Yang2, Qiaoling Zhang2 and Meiting Xie1 1College of Life Sciences, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China 2School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin, 300072, China Bitterness, caused by cucurbitacins, is present in some melon fruit. Although bitter compound biosynthesis and regulation in Cucurbitaceae plants have been reported, the dynamic changes in bitterness during fruit development are unknown. Bitterness severity was measured for 19 inbred melon lines, including 14 lines of Cucumis melo var. chinensis, two var. inodorus and three var. conomon, using a panel tasting method. The data showed that bitterness severity was different in several lines of var. chinensis during fruit growth and maturation. Nb46 and Nb320, two elite parental lines of var. chinensis used in melon breeding, were used as experimental materials. Bitterness was severe at stage I, but moderate and disappeared at stage II and III in the fruit of Nb46. There was non-bitterness in the fruit of Nb320 throughout the development period. Furthermore, the cucurbitacin B (CuB) content gradually decreased in Nb46, while in Nb320, the CuB content changed little and remained at a quite low level during fruit development. Different expression patterns of the genes involved in CuB biosynthesis and regulation were found between Nb46 and Nb320. The expression levels of these genes were significantly higher in Nb46 than Nb320 in the early developmental stages, and this correlated with a higher concentration of CuB in Nb46 than Nb320. These results demonstrate that bitterness severity is different in var. chinensis during fruit developmental stages, and that the CuB biosynthesis-related genes are a critical factor in this process. We hope these findings will contribute to the breeding of non-bitter melon cultivars. Key Words: bitterness, Cucurbitacin B (CuB), CuB biosynthesis-related genes, fruit development, melon (Cucumis melo L.). the ovary and young fruit, vegetative morphological Introduction characteristics and fruit variation, melons are subdi- The melon (Cucumis melo L.), a highly diversified vided into two subspecies, namely, subsp. agrestis hav- species of the Cucurbitaceae family, is an economically ing ovaries with short, appressed hairs, and subsp. melo important fruit crop cultivated around the world. During having pilose or lanate ovaries with long, spreading soft the past decade, the average production of melon was hairs (Kirkbride, 1993). The former is further subdi- over 29 million tons per year (FAOSTAT 2017, http:// vided into five group varieties, such as var. chinensis, faostat.fao.org/). It is cultivated in mainly temperate var. conomon and var. makuwa, and the latter is further and tropical countries, with the major producer regions subdivided into eleven group varieties, such as var. located in Asia and China leading the world (FAOSTAT inodorus, var. flexuosus and var. catalupensis (Brickell 2017, http://faostat.fao.org/). Melon has many variant et al., 2009; Hammer and Gladis, 2014). Another classi- types. On the basis of length and distribution of hairs on fication method was also reported in other studies. Using the combination of independent fruit characteris- Received; June 13, 2018. Accepted; November 19, 2018. tics, for example, fruit shape and size, skin colour, flesh First Published Online in J-STAGE on January 19, 2019. colour, sex expression, seed size, fruit development and This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation conservation, melons could be classified into 19 horti- of China (31400236), Tianjin Research Program of Application cultural Groups (some of which are divided into sub- Foundation and Advanced Technology (14JCQNJC9700) and the Elite Scholar Program of Tianjin University (2016XR-0007). groups), such as Group agrestis, kachri, chito, tibish, * Corresponding author (E-mail: [email protected]). acidulus, momordica, conomon, makuwa, chinensis, © 2019 The Japanese Society for Horticultural Science (JSHS), All rights reserved. 254 D. Hua, J. Fu, L. Liu, X. Yang, Q. Zhang and M. Xie and sub-group ogon, nashi-uri, and yuki (Pitrat, 2008, against cutaneous anaphylaxis and contact dermatitis 2016). Components that determine melon quality, such (Tabata et al., 1993). Hayashi et al. (2001) cloned a as fruit skin color, flesh color, sugar content, fruit gene, LcIMS1, from luffa, which encoded the bryonia weight, and shape, change significantly in different de- alkyd synthase belonging to OSC. Three OSC genes velopmental stages. Bitterness is one trait that is unac- (CcCDS1, CcCDS2 and ClCDS1) were cloned from ceptable to customers, but very precious to researchers, watermelons, of which only CcCDS2 possessed cucur- and is due to cucurbitacins mainly produced in bitadienol synthase activity (Davidovich-Rikanati et al., Cucurbitaceae plants, such as the cucumber (Cucumis 2015). A bitterness gene CsBi, which encoded a cucur- sativus L.) (Shang et al., 2014), melon (Zhou et al., bitadienol synthase, was identified in cucumbers 2016), watermelon (Citrullus lanatus var. lanatus) (Shang et al., 2014). Zhou et al. (2016) did a further (Davidovich-Rikanati et al., 2015), and pumpkin study on the bitterness biosynthetic genes ClBi and (Cucurbita pepo L. and C. maxima L.) (Shibuya et al., CmBi in watermelon and melon, respectively, and sum- 2004). Watermelon bitterness is due to the accumula- marized the metabolic synthesis process of cucurbita- tion of cucurbitacin E (CuE) and B (CuB) (Davidovich- cins in Cucurbitaceae plants. Rikanati et al., 2015). The accumulation of cucurbitacin Gene clusters that play important functions in the C (CuC) and CuB could lead to cucumbers and melons biosynthesis of secondary metabolites are common in having a bitter taste, respectively (Shang et al., 2014; plants. For example, the DIBOA biosynthesis gene Zhou et al., 2016). According to previous studies, CuB cluster in maize (Frey et al., 1997), triterpene synthesis was the major bitter compound isolated from melons gene cluster (Field and Osbourn, 2008) and marneral (Lester, 1997; Zhou et al., 2016). Cucurbitacins are bit- synthesis and modification gene cluster (Field et al., ter and toxic to most organisms, and they are recog- 2011) in Arabidopsis thaliana. The clusters co-regulate nized as toxins in plant defense responses against a set of genes controlling successive steps in a biosyn- insects and herbivores (Balkema-Boomstra et al., 2003; thetic or developmental pathway. The gene clusters Tallamy et al., 1997). Cucurbitacins also have consider- were also found in the cucurbitacins biosynthesis of cu- able pharmaceutical value. They have been used in the cumbers, melons and watermelons, respectively (Shang form of traditional herbal medicine, such as using the et al., 2014; Zhou et al., 2016). In melons, nine CuB stem of bitter melon fruit as a traditional hepatoprotec- biosynthetic genes, including an OSC (CmBi), six cyto- tive medicine in China. Topical application of CuB re- chromes P450 (CYPs, including Cm160, Cm170, sulted in significant reduction of epidermal hyperplasia Cm180, Cm710, Cm890, and Cm490), an acyltransfer- and inflammatory cytokines, and ameliorated psoriatic ase (CmACT), and a fruit-specific regulator (CmBt), are symptoms (Li et al., 2015). Natural cucurbitacins and co-expressed in the fruit of a wild ancestor, six of which their derivatives have been recognized as promising are clustered (CmBi, four CYPs and CmACT) on chro- antitumor compounds for several types of cancer, in- mosome 11 (Zhou et al., 2016). According to the previ- cluding Non-small cell lung cancer (Marostica et al., ous study, CuB biosynthesis starts from 2,3- 2017), Osteosarcoma (Zhang et al., 2017) and gastric oxidosqualene to generate cucurbitadienol, which is cancer (Liu et al., 2017). catalyzed to 11-carbonyl-20β-hydroxycucurbitadienol Cucurbitacins are a group of highly oxygenated tetra- and 11-carbonyl-2β, 20β-dihydroxycucurbitadienol. cyclic triterpenoids, which are synthesized from 2,3- Then, CmACT acetylates cucurbitacin D into CuB in oxidosqualene through the mevalonic acid pathway the melon (Fig. 3; Zhou et al., 2016). (Thimmappa et al., 2014). Cucurbitadienol, one inter- Although the expression patterns and functions of mediate product of this pathway, which is catalyzed by some important genes involved in CuB biosynthesis Cucurbitadienol synthase, is considered the basic skele- have been identified in the melon, the fruit bitterness ton of cucurbitacins in the plant family Cucurbitaceae. and expression patterns of those genes was unknown Cucurbitacins synthesis starts with the cyclization of during fruit development. In this study, we found sever- 2,3-oxidosqualene to cucurbitadienol, which is primari- al lines of var. chinensis had a bitter taste at the early ly determined by oxidosqualene cyclases (OSCs). In- developmental stage, but did not have any bitter taste at deed, several sequences encoding for OSCs have been the mature stage. Therefore, we examined the accumu- cloned and characterized in many plants (Andre et al., lation of CuB and expression patterns of CuB 2016; Calegario et al., 2016; Davidovich-Rikanati et al., biosynthesis-related genes in the