Changes in the Contents of Metabolites and Enzyme Activities in Rice Plants Responding to Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn Infection: Activation of Glycolysis and Connection to Phenylpropanoid Pathway

Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn causes sheath blight disease in rice, and genetic resistance against it is the most desirable characteristic. Current improvement efforts are based on analysis of polygenic quantitative trait loci (QTLs), but interpretation is limited by the lack of information on the changes in metabolic pathways. Our previous studies linked activation of the glycolytic pathway to enhanced generation of lignin in the phenylpropanoid pathway. The current studies investigated the regulation of glycolysis by examining the time course of changes in enzymatic activities and metabolite contents. The results showed that the activities of all glycolytic enzymes as well as fructose-6-phosphate (F-6-P), fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (F-1,6-P2), dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate (GAP), 3-phosphoglycerate (3-PG), phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) and pyruvate contents increased. These results combined with our previous findings that the expression of phosphoglucomutase (PGM), triosephosphate isomerase (TPI), glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), enolase and pyruvate kinase (PK) increased after infection suggested that the additional establishment of glycolysis in the cytosol compartment occurred after infection. Further evidence for this was our recent findings that the increase in expression of the 6-phosphofructokinase (PFK) plastid isozyme Os06g05860 was accompanied by an increase in expression of three cytosolic PFK isozymes, i.e. Os01g09570, Os01g53680 and Os04g39420, as well as pyrophosphate-dependent phosphofrucokinase (PFP) isozymes Os08g25720 (α-subunit) and Os06g13810 (β-subunit) in infected rice plants of the resistant line. The results also showed that the reactions catalysed by PFK/PFP, aldolase, GAPDH + phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) and PK in leaf sheaths of R. solani-infected rice plants were non-equilibrium reactions in vivo. This study showed that PGM, phosphoglucose isomerase (PGI), TPI and phosphoglycerate mutase (PGmu) + enolase could be regulated through coarse control whereas, PFK/PFP, aldolase, GAPDH + PGK and PK could be regulated through coarse and fine controls simultaneously.