Fig. 2: Involvement of auxiliary genes drives diversification of thalianol BGC between species.

a LC-MS analysis of extracts from Nicotiana benthamiana leaves co-expressing thalianol pathway genes (top three traces) and of root extracts from A. thaliana accession Col-0 and A. lyrata accession VLH6. TIC, total ion chromatogram; EIC, extracted ion chromatogram. The mass fragment 579.3622 was used to detect T10 and T17. The MS spectra underlying the EIC peaks are as shown in Supplementary Fig. 3b. Each experiment was independently repeated three times. b Comparison of the expression patterns of the thalianol cluster-related genes in different organs in A. thaliana and A. lyrata. Transcripts per kilobase million (TPM) values were used to generate the heatmap. The colors indicate the level of gene expression from low (red) to high (green). The Z-score represents the deviation from the mean by standard deviation units. c Divergence of the thalianol pathways in A. thaliana and A. lyrata. The black arrows show the directions of the biosynthetic pathways, starting from THAS. The numbering of the products is as in Fig. 1a. The structural differences between the final pathway end products T10 and T17 are highlighted. Source data underlying b are provided as a Source Data file.