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Melatonin improves plant resistance to multiple stresses by participating in the biosynthesis of metabolites. Flavonoids are an important family of plant secondary metabolites and are widely recognized to be involved in resistance; however, the crosstalk between melatonin and flavonoid is largely unknown. We found that the resistance of pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) to salt, drought, and heat stresses were significantly enhanced by pre-treatment with melatonin. Combined transcriptome and LC-ESI-MS/MS metabolomics analyses showed that melatonin significantly induced the enrichment of flavonoids and mediated the reprogramming of biosynthetic pathway genes. The highest fold-increase in expression in response to melatonin treatment was observed for the CcF3´H family, which encodes an enzyme that catalyses the biosynthesis of luteolin, and the transcription factor CcPCL1 directly bonded to the CcF3´H-5 promoter to enhance its expression. In addition, salt stress also induced the expression of CcPCL1 and CcF3´H-5 , and their overexpression in transgenic plants greatly enhanced salt tolerance by promoting the biosynthesis of luteolin. Overall, our results indicated that pre-treatment of pigeon pea with melatonin promoted luteolin biosynthesis through the CcPCL1 and CcF3´H-5 pathways, resulting in salt tolerance. Our study shows that melatonin enhances plant tolerance to multiple stresses by mediating flavonoid biosynthesis, providing new avenues for studying the crosstalk between melatonin and flavonoids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This study evaluated the antioxidant activity of the main active compound of an endophytic fungus MD-R-1 from pigeon pea. This fungus was identified as Aspergillus fumigates by ITS sequence. The antioxidant capacity was evaluated by DPPH, hydroxyl radical scavenging, reducing power, lipid peroxidation and XOD inhibitory effect assays. Among the four fractions, the EtOAc fraction showed the best antioxidant activity (IC50 values were 16.38, 35.20, 19.69, 22.64 and 193.24μg/mL, respectively) and the highest phenolic and flavonoid content. Furthermore, it possessed good protective activity from oxidative DNA damage. The activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione reductase (GR) in HepG2 cells treated with MD-R-1 EtOAc extracts were also determined. The results showed that EtOAc extracts significantly increased the activities of SOD, CAT and GR in HepG2 cells in a dose-dependent manner. The LC–MS/MS was used to analyze EtOAc fraction and the result pointed to a notable antioxidant compound, luteolin. The present investigation suggests that MD-R-1 represents a valuable natural antioxidant source and may be applicable in health food industry potentially. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]