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Review
. 2022 Jul 1;23(13):7355.
doi: 10.3390/ijms23137355.

Alternative Splicing and Its Roles in Plant Metabolism

Pui Ying Lam  1 , Lanxiang Wang  2   3 , Clive Lo  4 , Fu-Yuan Zhu  2
Affiliations
Review

Alternative Splicing and Its Roles in Plant Metabolism

Pui Ying Lam et al. Int J Mol Sci. .

Abstract

Plant metabolism, including primary metabolism such as tricarboxylic acid cycle, glycolysis, shikimate and amino acid pathways as well as specialized metabolism such as biosynthesis of phenolics, alkaloids and saponins, contributes to plant survival, growth, development and interactions with the environment. To this end, these metabolic processes are tightly and finely regulated transcriptionally, post-transcriptionally, translationally and post-translationally in response to different growth and developmental stages as well as the constantly changing environment. In this review, we summarize and describe the current knowledge of the regulation of plant metabolism by alternative splicing, a post-transcriptional regulatory mechanism that generates multiple protein isoforms from a single gene by using alternative splice sites during splicing. Numerous genes in plant metabolism have been shown to be alternatively spliced under different developmental stages and stress conditions. In particular, alternative splicing serves as a regulatory mechanism to fine-tune plant metabolism by altering biochemical activities, interaction and subcellular localization of proteins encoded by splice isoforms of various genes.

Keywords: alkaloids; alternative splicing; ascorbate; lipids; metabolism; phenylpropanoids; phytohormones; plants; starch; terpenoids.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Analysis of keywords in Web of Science Core Collection database from January 2012 to May 2022. (a) Keyword co-occurrence network analyzed by BibExcel and Pajek. Nodes represent keywords. Node size represents the frequency of keywords that appear. Node colors represent modularity. (b) Burst keyword analysis. Length of colored boxes represents burst status duration. Colors represent burst strength. Bibliometric analysis was carried out by retrieving citation data on topic search using query: “TS = (alternative splicing OR splicing factor) AND plant AND (metabolism OR metabolic OR metabolize)” and was further analyzed by CiteSpace (https://citespace.podia.com, accessed on 1 June 2022).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Alternative splicing and its regulation on metabolism in plants during stress responses and development. (a) Common types of alternative splicing events in plants. Boxes: exons; horizontal lines: introns; (b) regulation of alternative splicing by stresses and developmental stages. Stresses that regulate alternative splicing are indicated in purple. Developmental stages that regulate alternative splicing are indicated in navy blue.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Examples of plant metabolism regulated by alternative splicing. (a) Regulation of transcription factor MaMYB16 in banana by alternative splicing and its roles in starch metabolism; (b) regulation of CsLIS/NES in tea plants by alternative splicing and its roles in linalool and nerolidol biosynthesis; (c) regulation of CmbHLH2 in chrysanthemums by alternative splicing and its roles in anthocyanin biosynthesis and floret coloration; (d) regulation of JASMONATE ZIM-domain (JAZ) repressor in tea plants by alternative splicing and its roles in jasmonate-mediated flavonoid biosynthesis.
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