Abstract

Saeed Mollayi , Alireza Ghassempour *, Hassan Y. Aboul-Enein

Recently, witches' broom disease causes a large problem for Citrus aurantifolia in a few countries such as Oman and Iran. The results show that the metabolism of plant cells are greatly changed due to biotic stresses leading plant to an optimized metabolic response for defense. Herein, we showed that the infection of Citrus aurantifolia to Witches' broom disease has a close relation with the content of catechin and epicatechin metabolites which are well known for their biological properties. These changes in the metabolites levels were in proper agreement with the activities of phenylalanine ammonia-lyase(PAL) and chalcone synthase (CHS) as the key enzymes of the biosynthesis of catechin and epicatechin. Infection of the plant resulted in the higher levels of both the metabolites with up regulated activities of PAL and CHS. Enantiomeric analysis of the metabolites revealed that infection of the Citrus aurantifolia cause to change the enantiomeric composition of catechin and caused accumulation of the (+)-enantiomer, which is a known antibacterial agent compared to (-)-catechin. Results of this study showed that plant is able to regulate the chirality of necessary metabolites when acquired in the stress conditions.