Methyl jasmonate induction of tanshinone biosynthesis in Salvia miltiorrhiza hairy roots is mediated by JASMONATE ZIM-DOMAIN repressor proteins

Jasmonic acid (JA) is an important plant hormone involved in regulation of many aspects of plant growth and development including secondary metabolism and JASMONATE ZIM-DOMAIN (JAZ) proteins are key components in JA signal processes. In this study, two new JAZ genes named SmJAZ3 and SmJAZ9 were cloned from S. miltiorrhiza hairy roots and characterized. Expression profiles under methyl jasmonate (MJ) treatment revealed that SmJAZ3 and SmJAZ9 were both MJ-responsive. Subcellular localization assay showed that SmJAZ3 was located in nucleus while SmJAZ9 was preferentially in nucleus. Expression of SmJAZ3 and SmJAZ9 in S. miltiorrhiza hairy roots differently affected the production of tanshinone. Over-expression of SmJAZ3 or SmJAZ9 in hairy roots produced lower level of tanshinone compared with the control, tanshinone production was as low as 0.077 mg/g DW in line SmJAZ3-3 and 0.266 mg/g DW in line SmJAZ9-22. Whereas, down-regulation of SmJAZs enhanced tanshione production, the content of tanshinone increased to 2.48 fold in anti-SmJAZ3-3 line, and 1.35-fold in anti-SmJAZ9-23 line. Our work indicated that SmJAZ3 and SmJAZ9 are involved in regulation of tanshinone biosynthesis and act as repressive transcriptional regulators in the JA signaling pathway, which paves the way to further dissect molecular mechanism in details in the future.