Vitamin deficiencies in humans: can plant science help?

The term vitamin describes a small group of organic compounds that are absolutely required in the human diet. Although for the most part, dependency criteria are met in developed countries through balanced diets, this is not the case for the five billion people in developing countries who depend predominantly on a single staple crop for survival. Thus, providing a more balanced vitamin intake from high-quality food remains one of the grandest challenges for global human nutrition in the coming decade(s). Here, we describe the known importance of vitamins in human health and current knowledge on their metabolism in plants. Deficits in developing countries are a combined consequence of a paucity of specific vitamins in major food staple crops, losses during crop processing, and/or overreliance on a single species as a primary food source. We discuss the role that plant science can play in addressing this problem and review successful engineering of vitamin pathways. We conclude that while considerable advances have been made in understanding vitamin metabolic pathways in plants, more cross-disciplinary approaches must be adopted to provide adequate levels of all vitamins in the major staple crops to eradicate vitamin deficiencies from the global population.

GintPDX1 encodes a protein involved in vitamin B6 biosynthesis that is up-regulated by oxidative stress in the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Glomus intraradices.

Vitamin B6 is an essential metabolite that has recently been implicated in defense against cellular oxidative stress. In fungi, the de novo biosynthetic pathway of vitamin B6 involves two genes, PDX1 and PDX2. Here, we report a component of the PDX1/PDX2 vitamin B6 biosynthetic pathway in an arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus. Using rapid amplification of cDNA ends, we isolated the full-length cDNA of a PDX-like gene, GintPDX1, from Glomus intraradices. GintPDX1 expression was analysed by real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). GintPDX1 activity and function were investigated by heterologous complementation of the yeast strainDeltasnz1, which is deficient in vitamin B6 biosynthesis. Sequence data revealed that GintPDX1 is highly homologous to other identified PDX1 proteins. GintPDX1 restores prototrophy to the vitamin B6 auxotrophic yeast mutant and reverts its superoxide sensitivity. GintPDX1 is expressed throughout the fungal life cycle, with the highest transcription levels found in the intraradical fungal structures. GintPDX1 expression was induced in response to hydrogen peroxide, paraquat and copper. The results demonstrate that AM fungi possess at least one component of the machinery necessary for vitamin B6 biosynthesis. Transcriptional regulation of GintPDX1 suggests a role for vitamin B6 as an antioxidant and modulator of reactive oxygen species in G. intraradices.