Thiamethoxam Metabolism and Metabolic Effects in Cell Suspension Culture of Tea (Camellia sinensis L.)

Thiamethoxam (TMX) has already been proven to have a physiological effect in plant tissue or cell expect for the insecticidal activity. In our previous study, TMX was verified to be metabolized by tea cells in either a suspension culture or tea plant into several metabolites. Here, tea cell suspension cultures were treated for 45 days to investigate the metabolite effects in both the tea cells and the culture supernatants by nontargeted metabolomics. Using multivariate analysis (PCA and OPLS-DA), all treatment and control groups could be clearly separated. Inside the cells, 113 metabolites were found to be up-regulated while 122 were down-regulated, when compared with untreated cells. In the culture supernatant, there were 128 up-regulated and 35 down-regulated metabolites, compared to untreated cultures. KEGG searches revealed that the alanine, aspartate, and glutamate metabolic pathways were strongly affected by TMX metabolism within the tea cell. Molecular docking models showed that (i) 4-aminobutyrate aminotransferase may be related to the formation of 2-chloro-thiazole-5-carboxylic acid and (ii) 3′(2′),5′-bisphosphate nucleotidase may be able to interact with TMX. This study can help us to understand the interaction mechanism of pesticides with plant cells.