Lignification and structural biomass production in tobacco with suppressed caffeic/5-hydroxy ferulic acid-O-methyl transferase activity under ambient and elevated CO concentrations.

To investigate the relationship between growth, biomass partitioning and lignification we used tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) in which O-methyl transferase (OMT) activity, an enzyme involved in the pathway of sinapyl alcohol formation for lignin synthesis, was suppressed by antisense transformation. To modulate growth, controls and transformed tobacco plants were grown under ambient (approximately 380 p.p.m) or elevated CO(2) (700 p.p.m), respectively. Lignin concentrations and composition were determined with spectrophotometric methods (thioglycolate and acetyl bromide) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, respectively. A comparison of the thioglycolate and acetylbromide method suggested that the thioglycolate method was sensitive to changes in the syringyl/guaiacyl (S/G)-ratio in lignin and therefore not suitable for quantification in tissues with altered lignin composition. Growth under elevated CO(2) increased leaf and stem biomass of both genotypes by 40 and 20%, respectively, compared with ambient CO(2) and had no effect on root biomass. OMT suppression did not affect lignin concentrations in the leaves but caused a shift in biomass partitioning from the structural to the non-structural fraction. Elevated CO(2) caused a shift towards production of structural compounds resulting in decreased foliar lignin concentrations and indicating that the lignin/structural mass ratio is flexible in leaves. By contrast, the lignin concentrations of stems were unaffected by elevated CO(2) or OMT suppression and increased about three-fold from the apex to the base. Antisense-OMT plants produced more stem biomass than controls but showed no changes of the relative partitioning of biomass to the different pools. This indicates that the metabolic control of carbon fluxes to the production of structural versus non-structural fractions is tighter in stems than in leaves. FTIR spectroscopy indicated a relative increase in guaiacyl- as compared with syringyl-units in antisense-OMT tobacco, which was more pronounced under elevated as compared with ambient CO(2). Since there was no evidence for decreased lignin concentrations in the antisense-OMT plants but increased biomass formation we suggest that less methylated lignins are 'cheaper' in biosynthetic carbon and energy demand and, thus, may enable plants to allocate increased resources to growth.