Understanding how plants integrate metabolic signals with developmental processes is crucial for uncovering the mechanisms underlying their growth and adaptation.

Trehalose 6-phosphate (Tre6P) is an important signalling metabolite in plants with influence over many developmental and metabolic processes. It has been demonstrated that Tre6P is both a sucrose-specific signal and a negative feedback regulator or sucrose levels. This means that Tre6P levels are not only responsive to changes in sucrose supply and act as a signal for sucrose availability, but also that the levels of Tre6P are sensed by the plant to modulate sucrose levels in return. This homeostatic function of Tre6P is thereby somewhat analogous to the insulin-glucagon system that regulates blood glucose content in animals and humans. As sucrose is the main transport sugar in most land plants, Tre6P is a key signal that helps plants to use their carbon resources in an efficient manner.

Tre6P is thus involved in connecting plant metabolism and development with carbon availability.

Tre6P is essential in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, as mutations in the main Tre6P synthase (TREHALOSE-6-PHOSPHATE SYNTHASE1) are embryo lethal in Arabidopsis plants. Using tagged version of TPS1, we demonstrated that Tre6P synthesis is predominantly located in meristematic tissues like the shoot apical and axillary meristems, as well as in the vasculature of shoots and roots.

Altering Tre6P levels results in a reprogramming of metabolism and many phenotypic alterations in plants, including changes in flowering time, shoot branching, and root development. Tre6P thereby acts locally in sink tissues, so sugar consumers, and source tissues, so net sugar producers, as well as systemically in the vasculature. Especially its systemic role in the vasculature suggests that Tre6P might be a new phytohormone-like signalling metabolite.

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Publications Franziska Fichtner

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