JXB Advance Access published online on October 3, 2008
Journal of Experimental Botany, doi:10.1093/jxb/ern239
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RESEARCH PAPER |
Variation of metabolic profiles in developing maize kernels up- and down-regulated for the hda101 gene
1Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185-Roma, Italia
2CRA-Unità di Ricerca per la Maiscoltura, Bergamo, Italia
* To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: c.manetti{at}caspur.it
To shed light on the specific contribution of HDA101 in modulating metabolic pathways in the maize seed, changes in the metabolic profiles of kernels obtained from hda101 mutant plants have been investigated by a metabonomic approach. Dynamic properties of chromatin folding can be mediated by enzymes that modify DNA and histones. The enzymes responsible for the steady-state of histone acetylation are histone acetyltransferase and histone deacetylase (HDA). Therefore, it is interesting to evaluate the effects of up- and down-regulation of a Rpd-3 type HDA on the development of maize seeds in terms of metabolic changes. This has been reached by analysing nuclear magnetic resonance spectra by different chemometrician approaches, such as Orthogonal Projection to Latent Structure-Discriminant Analysis, Parallel Factors Analysis, and Multi-way Partial Least Squares-Discriminant Analysis (N-PLS-DA). In particular, the latter approaches were chosen because they explicitly take time into account, organizing data into a set of slices that refer to different steps of the developing process. The results show the good discriminating capabilities of the N-PLS-DA approach, even if the number of samples ought be increased to obtain better predictive capabilities. However, using this approach, it was possible to show differences in the accumulation of metabolites during development and to highlight the changes occuring in the modified seeds. In particular, the results confirm the role of this gene in cell cycle control.
Key words: Metabolomics, metabonomics, multi-way analysis, NMR, Rpd3, Zea mays
Received 12 June 2008; Revised 1 August 2008 Accepted 14 August 2008