Identification and functional characterization of SmABCG24 regulating tanshinone transport in Salvia miltiorrhiza.
Xie J, Zhang Z, Chen Z, Yu H, Huang X
Medicinal Plants
PubMedTanshinones from red sage are used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat heart disease and inflammation, and understanding how the plant moves these compounds could help growers and researchers cultivate higher-yield medicinal herbs or engineer plants that produce more medicine with less effort.
Red sage is a plant prized for centuries in traditional medicine because its roots are packed with powerful compounds that protect the heart and fight inflammation. Scientists found a special protein in the plant that works like a tiny pump, grabbing these compounds and pushing them out of cells — which also keeps the cells from being poisoned by their own medicine. This pump needs energy to work and was confirmed in lab experiments using yeast cells, proving it's a real molecular workhorse for moving medicine through the plant.
Key Findings
SmABCG24 is a half-size ABC transporter protein found on the outer membrane of red sage cells, making it the first characterized tanshinone transporter in this species.
Yeast cells engineered to express SmABCG24 efficiently exported tanshinone IIA and showed significantly reduced cytotoxicity from the compound, confirming active export function.
Transport activity depended on both ATP hydrolysis and the proton gradient, as blocking either process inhibited tanshinone export, revealing a dual-energy requirement.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists identified a molecular pump protein in red sage (a medicinal herb) that moves the plant's potent healing compounds — called tanshinones — across cell walls and out of cells. This discovery reveals, for the first time, a key mechanism by which red sage transports its medicinal molecules, opening the door to producing more of these compounds for medicine.
Abstract Preview
Salvia miltiorrhiza is a perennial herb of the Lamiaceae family, in which tanshinones, a group of diterpenoid compounds, mainly accumulate in roots. While the biosynthesis and regulation of tanshin...
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