AI Article Synopsis
- Plants create a variety of specialized metabolites from primary ones, crucial for both their adaptation and human uses in nutrition and medicine.
- While primary metabolism is generally stable across plant species, certain lineages have shown alterations in some metabolic pathways, particularly for amino acids and lipids.
- These changes in primary metabolism might drive significant evolutionary shifts, facilitating the development of specialized metabolites like terpenoids and phenylpropanoids.
Article Abstract
Plants produce a diverse array of lineage-specific specialized (secondary) metabolites, which are synthesized from primary metabolites. Plant specialized metabolites play crucial roles in plant adaptation as well as in human nutrition and medicine. Unlike well-documented diversification of plant specialized metabolic enzymes, primary metabolism that provides essential compounds for cellular homeostasis is under strong selection pressure and generally assumed to be conserved across the plant kingdom. Yet, some alterations in primary metabolic pathways have been reported in plants. The biosynthetic pathways of certain amino acids and lipids have been altered in specific plant lineages. Also, two alternative pathways exist in plants for synthesizing primary precursors of the two major classes of plant specialized metabolites, terpenoids and phenylpropanoids. Such primary metabolic diversities likely underlie major evolutionary changes in plant metabolism and chemical diversity by acting as enabling or associated traits for the evolution of specialized metabolic pathways.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6635470 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2019.00881 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!