Deep metabolomics revealed trajectories of jasmonate signaling‐mediated primary metabolism in Arabidopsis upon Spodoptera litura herbivory

Abstract

Plants defend against chewing herbivores by up‐regulating jasmonic acid (JA) signaling, which activates downstream signaling cascades and produces numerous secondary metabolites that act as defense molecules against the herbivores. Although secondary metabolism always remains a focus of research, primary metabolism is also reported to be realigned upon herbivory. However, JA signaling‐mediated modulation of primary metabolites and their metabolic pathways in plants are mostly unexplored. Here, we applied gas chromatography–mass spectrometry‐based untargeted metabolomics aided with computational statistical frameworks on wild type Arabidopsis, mutants of active JA receptor (i.e., CORONATINE‐INSENSITIVE 1, COI1‐1) and downstream transcription factor (i.e., MYC2) to navigate the JA signaling‐mediated primary metabolism alterations during herbivory. Pathway and metabolite's chemical class enrichment analysis revealed JA signaling is crucial for constitutive as well as herbivore‐induced primary metabolism and topology of their interaction networks. JA signaling majorly modulated alterations of sugars, amino acids and related metabolites. Herbivory‐mediated sugar depletion and induction of methionine for aliphatic glucosinolates are also dependent on JA signaling. Taken together, our results demonstrate trails of JA signaling‐mediated primary metabolic alterations associated with herbivory.