Overexpression of mutated forms of aspartate kinase and cystathionine γ-synthase in tobacco leaves resulted in the high accumulation of methionine and threonine

Methionine and threonine are two essential amino acids, the levels of which limit the nutritional quality of plants. Both amino acids diverge from the same branch of the aspartate family biosynthesis pathway; therefore, their biosynthesis pathways compete for the same carbon/amino substrate. To further elucidate the regulation of methionine biosynthesis and seek ways of increasing the levels of these two amino acids, we crossed transgenic tobacco plants overexpressing the bacterial feedback-insensitive aspartate kinase (bAK), containing a significantly higher threonine level, with plants overexpressing Arabidopsis cystathionine gamma-synthase (AtCGS), the first unique enzyme of methionine biosynthesis. Plants co-expressing bAK and the full-length AtCGS (F-AtCGS) have significantly higher methionine and threonine levels compared with the levels found in wild-type plants, but the methionine level does not increase beyond that found in plants expressing F-AtCGS alone. This finding can be explained through the feedback inhibition regulation mediated by the methionine metabolite on the transcript level of AtCGS. To test this assumption, plants expressing bAK were crossed with plants expressing two mutated forms of AtCGS in which the domains responsible for the feedback regulation have been deleted. Indeed, significantly higher methionine contents and its metabolites levels accumulated in the newly produced plants, and the levels of threonine were also significantly higher than in the wild-type plants. The transcript level of the two mutated forms of AtCGS significantly increased when there was a high content of threonine in the plants, suggesting that threonine modulates, probably indirectly, the transcript level of AtCGS.