Abstract
The presence of the tetracyclic diterpene 16α-hydroxykaurane (16α-hydroxy-ent-kaurane, C20H34O, CAS 5524–17–4) was detected in sterile cell cultures of the moss Physcomitrella patens (Hedw.) B.S.G. using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. 16α-hydroxykaurane was found to be a major lipid compound in P. patens, with an estimated intracellular concentration of up to 0.84 mmol/l and an extracellular concentration of up to 9.3 µmol/l. The overall content of 16α-hydroxykaurane (in milligrams) produced per culture reached 0.37-fold that of chlorophyll a+b. In agar cultures with low air exchange, 16α-hydroxykaurane forms needle-like crystals on tissue and on the inner surface of the culture vessels, indicating that it is being released into the atmosphere. Solid phase microextraction confirmed the air-bound release of 16α-hydroxykaurane. To our knowledge this is the first report on the release of a plant-derived tetracyclic diterpene into the air.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Hanco Mierendorff (Inst. für Pharmazie, Hamburg) for help with the automatic GC sample processing. We thank Karen Dehn for the scanning electron micrographs, Hanna Blaschke and Naemi Grau for skilful laboratory work. We further thank Heribert Köckinger (Weissenkirchen, Austria) for Saelania glaucescens samples from the Austrian alps and Barbara Moffatt (University of Waterloo, Canada) for critically reading the manuscript. K.v.S. acknowledges funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
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Communicated by R. Reski
This work is dedicated to the 65th birthday of Prof. Heinz Hahn.
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von Schwartzenberg, K., Schultze, W. & Kassner, H. The moss Physcomitrella patens releases a tetracyclic diterpene. Plant Cell Rep 22, 780–786 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-004-0754-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-004-0754-6