Metabolomic Profiling of the Nectars of Aquilegia pubescens and A. Canadensis

PLoS One. 2015 May 1;10(5):e0124501. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124501. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

To date, variation in nectar chemistry of flowering plants has not been studied in detail. Such variation exerts considerable influence on pollinator-plant interactions, as well as on flower traits that play important roles in the selection of a plant for visitation by specific pollinators. Over the past 60 years the Aquilegia genus has been used as a key model for speciation studies. In this study, we defined the metabolomic profiles of flower samples of two Aquilegia species, A. Canadensis and A. pubescens. We identified a total of 75 metabolites that were classified into six main categories: organic acids, fatty acids, amino acids, esters, sugars, and unknowns. The mean abundances of 25 of these metabolites were significantly different between the two species, providing insights into interspecies variation in floral chemistry. Using the PlantSEED biochemistry database, we found that the majority of these metabolites are involved in biosynthetic pathways. Finally, we explored the annotated genome of A. coerulea, using the PlantSEED pipeline and reconstructed the metabolic network of Aquilegia. This network, which contains the metabolic pathways involved in generating the observed chemical variation, is now publicly available from the DOE Systems Biology Knowledge Base (KBase; http://kbase.us).

Publication types

  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Aquilegia / metabolism*
  • Flowers / metabolism
  • Metabolic Networks and Pathways
  • Metabolome
  • Metabolomics / methods*
  • Plant Nectar / metabolism*
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Species Specificity

Substances

  • Plant Nectar

Grants and funding

This work was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation of United States of America under the Division of Biological Infrastructure to Dr. Doreen Ware who is Co-Principal Investigator to the DBI-1265382. Financial support was provided by the Department of Energy (DE-AC02-98CH10886) for Seaver SMD and to Christos Noutsos from the NSF by the BDI-1265383, the iPlant Collaborative Project. Basil J. Nikolau and and Ann M. Perera received no specific funding for this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.