Studies on nitrogen-containing secondary metabolites playing a defensive role in plants

Abstract

Plants have evolved various types of defense systems against invading enemies, such as herbivory animals and microbial pathogens. Upon interaction with attacking organisms, plants activate their secondary metabolism and characteristic chemical compounds are synthesized in response. Plant defense compounds contain nitrogen atoms in many cases, and are often inducible by pathogen attack, or by elicitors that are derived from or reminiscent of the parts of microbial bodies, such as cell walls and flagella. Activity of the secondary metabolism and the effects of elicitor treatment can be quantitatively analyzed by measuring metabolic flux, which reveals a dynamic aspect of metabolic change that cannot be elucidated by general snapshot analyses. Comprehensive metabolic profiling is also a useful and important technique to analyze the role of a pathway in the whole metabolic map, and to identify unknown inter-regulatory mechanisms operating in the metabolic networks of plants. © Pesticide Science Society of Japan.