Discovery of a novel amino acid racemase through exploration of natural variation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

ABSTRACT: Plants produce diverse low-molecular-weight compounds via specialized metabolism. Discovery of the pathways underlying production of these metabolites is an important challenge for harnessing the huge chemical diversity and catalytic potential in the plant kingdom for human uses, but this effort is often encumbered by the necessity to initially identify compounds of interest or purify a catalyst involved in their synthesis. As an alternative approach, we have performed untargeted metabolite profiling and genome-wide association analysis on 440 natural accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana. This approach allowed us to establish genetic linkages between metabolites and genes. Investigation of one of the metabolite-gene associations led to the identification of N-malonyl-D-allo-isoleucine, and t

SUBMITTER: Strauch RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4577208 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature