Abstract
Despite of considerable contributions of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana in plant molecular biology, it has a limit in the secondary metabolism research, as the number of metabolites found in Arabidopsis is lower than those of other plants. Therefore, other model plants could be useful. The legume model Lotus japonicus could be one of the candidates as about 30% of the whole genes show no significant homology with the Arabidopsis genes. We have used suspension-cultured cells of L. japonicus for functional analyses of metabolism-related genes. Our previous study showed that yeast extracts induced expression of several genes. Here we analyzed metabolites of the elicitor-treated cultured cells using LC-MS, GC-TOF-MS and CE-MS, and found that isoflabonoid-like metabolites increased in the cells, but most of other metabolites remained unchanged. DNA array analysis of the cells and subsequent analysis using the Kazusa Plant Pathway Viewer program showed specific activation of isoflavonoid biosynthesis.
