Abstract
Ephedra distachya cultures have been known to accumulate two major $\rho-coumaroylamino$ acids (p-coumaroylgicine and $\rho-coumaroylamino$ -D-alanine) by D-Ala treament. When D-Ala was added together with serial concentrations of yeast-derived elicitor, the accumulation of $\rho-coumaroylamino$ -D-Ala $(\rho-CDA)$ was geatly increased in an additive manner. In feeding experiments, $[1-^14C]$-D-Ala was incorporated into $\rho-CDA$at a rate of 2.2% or 2.3% of added radioactivity, indicating that exogenous D-Ala served as a precursor of the conjugate. $[1-^14C]$-L-Ala wasalso incorporated into p-CDA (0.23%) in the elicitor treated cultures. This fact suggested that at least a part of $(\rho-CDA)$ was produced from active conversion of L-Ala by the elecitation. In order to investigate a possible role of D-Ala as an elicitor of $\rpo-coumaroylamino$ acids $(\rpo-CAA)$, cold D-Ala was added together with labeled L-Ala. Although L-Ala seemed to be incorporated into $\rho-CDA$ by this treatment, the incorporation ratio was too small (0.054%) to draw a clear conclusion. However, the amount of $\rpo-coumaroylglycine$, which did not use D-Ala as a substrate, was also sightly increased by D-Ala treatment irrespective of the presence of elicitor, suggesting that exogenous D-Ala might act as an elicitor of$\rpo-CAA$ as well as a precusor substrate of $\rho-CDA$.
