Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2022 Sep 14:13:994058.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.994058. eCollection 2022.

Vitamin E synthesis and response in plants

Yue Niu  1   2 , Qian Zhang  1   2 , Jiaojiao Wang  1   2 , Yanjie Li  2 , Xinhua Wang  2 , Yan Bao  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Vitamin E synthesis and response in plants

Yue Niu et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Vitamin E, also known as tocochromanol, is a lipid-soluble antioxidant that can only be produced by photosynthetic organisms in nature. Vitamin E is not only essential in human diets, but also required for plant environment adaptions. To synthesize vitamin E, specific prenyl groups needs to be incorporated with homogentisate as the first step of reaction. After decades of studies, an almost complete roadmap has been revealed for tocochromanol biosynthesis pathway. However, chlorophyll-derived prenyl precursors for synthesizing tocochromanols are still a mystery. In recent years, by employing forward genetic screening and genome-wide-association approaches, significant achievements were acquired in studying vitamin E. In this review, by summarizing the recent progresses in vitamin E, we provide to date the most updated whole view of vitamin E biosynthesis pathway. Also, we discussed about the role of vitamin E in plants stress response and its potential as signaling molecules.

Keywords: VTE; biosynthesis; pathway; signal; stress; tocochromanol; tocopherol; vitamin E.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Plant tocochromanol biosynthesis pathway and sources of metabolites. Metabolite names were colored for recognizing different tocochromanol synthesis pathways. Abbreviations of metabolites: HPP, 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate; HGA, homogentisate; Phytyl-P, phytyl-phosphate; PDP, phytyl-diphosphate; THGGPP, tetrahydrogeranylgeranyl pyrophosphate; GGDP, geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate; SPP, solanesyl pyrophosphate; MPBQ, 2-methyl-6-phytyl-1,4-benzoquinol; DMPBQ, 2,3-dimethyl-6-phytyl-1,4-benzoquinol. Abbreviations of enzymes: TAT1, tyrosine aminotransferase 1; TAT2, tyrosine aminotransferase 2; HPPD, 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase; CLD1, chlorophyll dephytylase 1; PPH, pheophytin pheophorbide hydrolase; VTE, vitamin E biosynthetic enzyme.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Representative HPLC traces of Arabidopsis leaf tocopherols subjected to different growth conditions (high light, heat, and dark). Tocol is used as internal standard [based on Bao et al. (2020), with modification].
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
A proposed working model of the vitamin E in signal transduction Chilling stress can be sensed by COLD1 to regulate calcium signal and tocochromanol homeostasis for transcriptional reprogramming in the nucleus. Other stresses including high-light and heat can also transduce retrograde signaling between chloroplast and nucleus for miRNA biogenesis, via manipulating PAP (3′-phosphoadenosine-5′-phosphate) and tocochromanols.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abbasi A. R., Hajirezaei M., Hofius D., Sonnewald U., Voll L. M. (2007). Specific roles of alpha- and gamma-tocopherol in abiotic stress responses of transgenic tobacco. Plant Physiol. 143 1720–1738. 10.1104/pp.106.094771 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Albert E., Kim S., Magallanes-Lundback M., Bao Y., Deason N., Danilo B., et al. (2022). Genome-wide association identifies a missing hydrolase for tocopherol synthesis in plants. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119:e2113488119. 10.1073/pnas.2113488119 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Allu A. D., Simancas B., Balazadeh S., Munné-Bosch S. (2017). Defense-related transcriptional reprogramming in Vitamin E-Deficient Arabidopsis mutants exposed to contrasting phosphate availability. Front. Plant Sci. 8:20. 10.3389/fpls.2017.01396 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alonso-Blanco C., Andrade J., Becker C., Bemm F., Bergelson J., Borgwardt K. M., et al. (2016). 1,135 genomes reveal the global pattern of polymorphism in Arabidopsis thaliana. Cell 166 481–491. 10.1016/j.cell.2016.05.063 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Armstead I., Donnison I., Aubry S., Harper J., Hortensteiner S., James C., et al. (2007). Cross-species identification of Mendel’s/locus. Science 315 73–73. 10.1126/science.1132912 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources