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Salvia miltiorrhiza is a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, whose quality and yield are often affected by diseases and environmental stresses during its growing season. Salicylic acid (SA) plays a significant role in plants responding to biotic and abiotic stresses, but the involved regulatory factors and their signaling mechanisms are largely unknown. In order to identify the genes involved in SA signaling, the RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) strategy was employed to evaluate the transcriptional profiles in S. miltiorrhiza cell cultures. A total of 50,778 unigenes were assembled, in which 5,316 unigenes were differentially expressed among 0-, 2-, and 8-h SA induction. The up-regulated genes were mainly involved in stimulus response and multi-organism process. A core set of candidate novel genes coding SA signaling component proteins was identified. Many transcription factors (e.g., WRKY, bHLH and GRAS) and genes involved in hormone signal transduction were differentially expressed in response to SA induction. Detailed analysis revealed that genes associated with defense signaling, such as antioxidant system genes, cytochrome P450s and ATP-binding cassette transporters, were significantly overexpressed, which can be used as genetic tools to investigate disease resistance. Our transcriptome analysis will help understand SA signaling and its mechanism of defense systems in S. miltiorrhiza.

Ca(2+) serves as a second messenger in plant responses to different signals, and salicylic acid (SA) has been recognized as a signal mediating plant responses to many stresses. We recently found that SA treatment led to the cytoplasmic acidification of Salvia miltiorrhiza cells and alkalinization of extracellular medium. Here, we demonstrate that SA can rapidly induce Ca(2+) mobilization in protoplasts, but the induction can be blocked with a channel blocker of either plasma or organellar membranes. Following SA, A 23187, or 10 mmol/L Ca(2+) treatment, rosmarinic acid (RA) accumulation reached the highest level at 16 h, whereas the peak was found at 10 h if plasma membrane channel blockers were used. By contrast, the highest accumulation of RA occurred at 16 h when organellar channels were blocked, exhibiting the same tendency with SA-induced cells. In agreement with these observations, both phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) activity and its gene expression detected by real-time PCR also showed the same patterns. These results indicate that SA treatment firstly results in calcium release from internal stores, which in turn leads to PAL activity increase, RA accumulation, and a large amount of Ca(2+) influx from apoplast after 10 h of SA induction.

Salicylic acid (SA) is an elicitor to induce the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites in plant cells. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) plays an important role as a key signaling molecule in response to various stimuli and is involved in the accumulation of secondary metabolites. However, the relationship between them is unclear and their synergetic functions on accumulation of secondary metabolites are unknown. In this paper, the roles of SA and H2O2 in rosmarinic acid (RA) production in Salvia miltiorrhiza cell cultures were investigated. The results showed that SA significantly enhanced H2O2 production, phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) activity, and RA accumulation. Exogenous H2O2 could also promote PAL activity and enhance RA production. If H2O2 production was inhibited by NADPH oxidase inhibitor (IMD) or scavenged by quencher (DMTU), RA accumulation would be blocked. These results indicated that H2O2 is secondary messenger for signal transduction, which can be induced by SA, significantly and promotes RA accumulation.

The present work investigated the effects of salicylic acid (SA) on the accumulation of phenolic compounds and the activities of PAL, TAT, SOD, CAT and POD enzymes in the Salvia miltiorrhiza cell culture. When SA is applied to the cell culture, phenolic compounds will increase and PAL, TAT, SOD, CAT, and POD enzymes will become more active. The accumulations of phenolic compounds and the PAL activity were stimulated 8h after the treatment with SA. The TAT activity was stimulated after 48 h. The resulting antioxidative enzymes' activities were greatly improved. SA elicitation on the phenolic acid accumulation was depended upon the application dosage and the time-duration. The suitable SA concentration for eliciting phenolic compound accumulations was 6.25-22.5mg/L. The elicitation effect of SA on phenolic compound accumulations correlated with the PAL activity, but not with the TAT activity. This indicates that PAL may be the key enzyme for the biosynthesis of salvianolic acid B and caffeic acid. The raised PAL activity leads to the improvement of the quantity of phenolic compounds. This could be of particular significance by using plant cell culture systems for biotechnological production of plant secondary metabolites such as salvianolic acid B and caffeic acid., (Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Phenolic acids are the main active ingredients in Salvia miltiorrhiza , which can be used for the treatment of many diseases, particularly cardiovascular diseases. It is known that salicylic acid (SA) can enhance phenolic acid content, but the molecular mechanism of its regulation is still unclear. Nonexpresser of PR genes 1 (NPR1) plays a positive role in the SA signaling pathway. In this study, we identified a SmNPR1 gene that responds to SA induction and systematically investigated its function. We found that SmNPR1 positively affected phenolic acid biosynthesis. Then, we identified a novel TGA transcription factor, SmTGA2, which interacts with SmNPR1. SmTGA2 positively regulates phenolic acid biosynthesis by directly up-regulating SmCYP98A14 expression. After double-gene transgenic analysis and other biochemical assays, it was found that SmNPR1 and SmTGA2 work synergistically to regulate phenolic acid biosynthesis. In addition, SmNPR4 forms a heterodimer with SmNPR1 to inhibit the function of SmNPR1, and SA can alleviate this effect. Collectively, these findings elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying the regulation of phenolic acid biosynthesis by SmNPR1–SmTGA2/SmNPR4 modules and provide novel insights into the SA signaling pathway regulating plant secondary metabolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenolic acids are the major bioactive metabolites produced in Salvia miltiorrhiza , a traditional Chinese medicine called Danshen. Many phytohormone elicitor treatments induce phenolic acid biosynthesis, even though the underlying mechanism remains obscure. Expression pattern analysis showed that SmMAPK3 was highly expressed in leaves, and SmMAPK3 was significantly induced by salicylic acid (SA) and methyl jasmonate (JA). Bioinformatics analysis revealed that SmMAPK3 belongs to group A and contains a TEY motif in the activation loop together with three conserved regions (P-loop, C-loop and CD-domain). A previous study speculated that SmMAPK3 is likely a positive regulator in the biosynthesis of phenolic acids in S. miltiorrhiza. In this study, overexpression of SmMAPK3 increased phenolic acid biosynthetic gene expression and enhanced the accumulation of phenolic acids in S. miltiorrhiza plantlets. Yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) analysis and firefly luciferase complementation imaging (LCI) assays revealed that SmMAPKK2/4/5/7-SmMAPK3-SmJAZs form a cascade that regulates the accumulation of phenolic acids. In summary, this work deepens our understanding of the posttranscriptional regulatory mechanisms of phenolic acid biosynthesis and sheds new light on metabolic engineering in S. miltiorrhiza. To response the treatment of SA and MeJA, SmMAPK3, the substrate of SmMAPKK2/4/5/7, reduces the stability of transcription repressor SmJAZs/IAAs via phosphorylation and consequently enhances the expression of secondary metabolite genes in S. miltiorrhiza. The SmMAPKK2/4/5/7-SmMAPK3-SmJAZs cascade plays a crucial regulatory role in phenolic acids biosynthesis. [Display omitted] • SmMAPK3 responses to phytohormone SA and MeJA. • Overexpression of SmMAPK3 upregulates phenolic acid biosynthesis. • SmMAPK3 interacts with upstream kinase SmMAPKK2/4/5/7 and downstream transcription repressor JAZs. • The SmMAPKK2/4/5/7-SmMAPK3-SmJAZs cascade regulates secondary metabolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]