谷胱甘肽在植物抗逆中的作用

在简要总结谷胱甘肽(GSH)的结构、分布、代谢和调控的基础上,概述了GSH在植物抗逆性方面的 作用,认为GSH通过植物体内螯合肽合成酶催化下聚合形成植物螯合肽来抵抗重金属的胁迫,作为抗氧化剂 参与低温伤害的保护,以亲核进攻一结合反应方式进行生物解毒等。讨论了GSH在植物抗逆性功能中的机 制,并就GSH今后在该方面的研究前景进行了展望。     

Review article. Glutathione: biosynthesis, metabolism and relationship to stress tolerance explored in transformed plants

Crucial roles in sulphur metabolism and plant defence have been described in recent years for the tripeptide thiol glutathione. In spite of this, the metabolism of glutathione and its response to stress conditions remained only partly understood. In many plants, one of the major difficulties in studying the control of glutathione synthesis is the low extractable activities of the enzymes involved. Consequently, several groups have exploited transformation technology using genes for the enzymes of glutathione synthesis or reduction. This approach has allowed the production of plants with systematically enhanced levels of glutathione (up to 4-fold higher than untransformed controls) and has permitted numerous insights into the control of glutathione synthesis or reduction state and its interaction with other areas of primary or defensive metabolism.     

水杨酸在植物抗环境胁迫中的作用

水杨酸在植物的抗病方面发挥着重要作用。近年来的研究还表明 ,水杨酸在植物的抗冷、热、盐、干旱、臭氧、重金属等环境胁迫方面也有明显的作用。该文介绍近年来有关水杨酸在植物抗环境胁迫方面的研究进展 ,并探讨了其作用机理。     

植物谷胱甘肽代谢与环境胁迫

谷胱甘肽是植物体内普遍存在的小分子抗氧化物质,它在还原态硫的储存和转运、蛋白质和核酸的合成、酶活性的调节、组织抗氧化特性的维持以及对氧化还原敏感的信号传导的调节中起着重要作用。谷胱甘肽库的大小及其氧化还原状态也与植物对多种生物异源物质及生物与非生物环境胁迫的忍耐密切相关。本文简要综述了近年来人们在植物谷胱甘肽生物合成与代谢、转运、信号传导以及胁迫响应中所取得的研究进展。     

Engineering of betaine biosynthesis and transport for abiotic stress tolerance in plants

Drought and salinity are the major factors that decrease crop yield. Organisms thriving in osmotic stress environments need adaptive mechanisms for adjusting their intracellular environment to external osmotic stress conditions. One such mechanism, to prevent water loss from the cells is to accumulate large amounts of low molecular weight organic compatible solutes such as proline, betaine and polyols to balance internal osmolarity of the cells. Accumulation of compatible solutes can be achieved by enhanced synthesis and/or reduced catabolism. Certain plants synthesize betaine in chloroplasts via a two-step oxidation of choline and betaine accumulation is associated with enhanced stress tolerance. Many important crop plants have low levels of betaine or none at all. Hence, betaine biosynthetic pathway is a target for metabolic engineering to enhance stress tolerance in crops. Introduction of betaine synthesis pathway into betaine non-accumulating plants has often improved stress tolerance. However, betaine levels of the engineered plants were generally low. To further enhance the betaine accumulation levels, we need to diagnose factors limitng betaine accumulation in engineered plants. Here we discuss recent progress on metabolic engineering of choline precursors for abiotic stress tolerance in plants.     

Glutathione is involved in environmental stress responses in Rhizobium tropici, including acid tolerance

The isolation of rhizobial strains which exhibit an intrinsic tolerance to acidic conditions has been reported and has facilitated studies on the basic mechanisms underlying acid tolerance. Rhizobium tropici strain CIAT899 displays a high intrinsic tolerance to acidity and therefore was used in this work to study the molecular basis of bacterial responses to acid conditions and other environmental stresses. We generated a collection of R. tropici CIAT899 mutants affected in acid tolerance using Tn5-luxAB mutagenesis, and one mutant strain (CIAT899-13T2), which fails to grow under acid conditions, was characterized in detail. Strain CIAT899-13T2 was found to contain a single Tn5-luxAB insertion in a gene showing a high degree of similarity with the Escherichia coli gshB gene, encoding the enzyme glutathione synthetase. Intracellular potassium pools and intracellular pH levels were found to be lower in the mutant than in the parent. The glutathione-deficient mutant was shown to be sensitive to weak organic acids, osmotic and oxidative stresses, and the presence of methylglyoxal. Glutathione restores responses to these stresses almost to wild-type levels. Our data show that in R. tropici the production of glutathione is essential for growth in extreme environmental conditions. The mutant strain CIAT899-13T2 induced effective nodules; however, it was found to be outcompeted by the wild-type strain in coinoculation experiments.     

Cadmium stress tolerance in crop plants: Probing the role of sulfur

Plants can''t move away and are therefore continuously confronted with unfavorable environmental conditions (such as soil salinity, drought, heat, cold, flooding and heavy metal contamination). Among heavy metals, cadmium (Cd) is a non-essential and toxic metal, rapidly taken up by roots and accumulated in various plant tissues which hamper the crop growth and productivity worldwide. Plants employ various strategies to counteract the inhibitory effect of Cd, among which nutrient management is one of a possible way to overcome Cd toxicity. Sulfur (S) uptake and assimilation are crucial for determining crop yield and resistance to Cd stress. Cd affects S assimilation pathway which leads to the activation of pathway responsible for the synthesis of cysteine (Cys), a precursor of glutathione (GSH) biosynthesis. GSH, a non-protein thiol acts as an important antioxidant in mitigating Cd-induced oxidative stress. It also plays an important role in phytochelatins (PCs) synthesis, which has a proven role in Cd detoxification. Therefore, S assimilation is considered a crucial step for plant survival under Cd stress. The aim of this review is to discuss the regulatory mechanism of S uptake and assimilation, GSH and PC synthesis for Cd stress tolerance in crop plants.Key words: cadmium, cysteine, glutathione, phytochelatins, stress tolerance, sulfur     

Role of salicylic acid on physiological and biochemical mechanism of salinity stress tolerance in plants

Salinity stress is one of the major abiotic stresses affecting plant growth and productivity globally. In order to improve the yields of plants growing under salt stress bear remarkable importance to supply sustainable agriculture. Acclimation of plants to salinized condition depends upon activation of cascade of molecular network involved in stress sensing/perception, signal transduction, and the expression of specific stress-related genes and metabolites. Isolation of salt overly sensitive (SOS) genes by sos mutants shed us light on the relationship between ion homeostasis and salinity tolerance. Regulation of antioxidative system to maintain a balance between the overproduction of reactive oxygen species and their scavenging to keep them at signaling level for reinstating metabolic activity has been elucidated. However, osmotic adaptation and metabolic homeostasis under abiotic stress environment is required. Recently, role of phytohormones like Abscisic acid, Jasmonic acid, and Salicylic acid in the regulation of metabolic network under osmotic stress condition has emerged through crosstalk between chemical signaling pathways. Thus, abiotic stress signaling and metabolic balance is an important area with respect to increase crop yield under suboptimal conditions. This review focuses on recent developments on improvement in salinity tolerance aiming to contribute sustainable plant yield under saline conditions in the face of climate change.     

Polyamines and abiotic stress tolerance in plants

Environmental stresses including climate change, especially global warming, are severely affecting plant growth and productivity worldwide. It has been estimated that two-thirds of the yield potential of major crops are routinely lost due to the unfavorable environmental factors. On the other hand, the world population is estimated to reach about 10 billion by 2050, which will witness serious food shortages. Therefore, crops with enhanced vigour and high tolerance to various environmental factors should be developed to feed the increasing world population. Maintaining crop yields under adverse environmental stresses is probably the major challenge facing modern agriculture where polyamines can play important role. Polyamines (PAs)(putrescine, spermidine and spermine) are group of phytohormone-like aliphatic amine natural compounds with aliphatic nitrogen structure and present in almost all living organisms including plants. Evidences showed that polyamines are involved in many physiological processes, such as cell growth and development and respond to stress tolerance to various environmental factors. In many cases the relationship of plant stress tolerance was noted with the production of conjugated and bound polyamines as well as stimulation of polyamine oxidation. Therefore, genetic manipulation of crop plants with genes encoding enzymes of polyamine biosynthetic pathways may provide better stress tolerance to crop plants. Furthermore, the exogenous application of PAs is also another option for increasing the stress tolerance potential in plants. Here, we have described the synthesis and role of various polyamines in abiotic stress tolerance in plants.Key words: abiotic stress tolerance, putrescine, spermidine, spermine, polyamines     

Glycinebetaine and abiotic stress tolerance in plants

The accumulation of osmolytes like glycinebetaine (GB) in cell is known to protect organisms against abiotic stresses via osmoregulation or osmoprotection. Transgenic plants engineered to produce GB accumulate very low concentration of GB, which might not be sufficient for osmoregulation. Therefore, other roles of GB like cellular macromolecule protection and ROS detoxification have been suggested as mechanisms responsible for abiotic stress tolerance in transgenic plants. In addition, GB influences expression of several endogenous genes in transgenic plants. The new insights gained about the mechanism of stress tolerance in GB accumulating transgenic plants are discussed.     

Engineering stress tolerance in transgenic plants

Research in our laboratory has focused on the analysis of the functions of a variety of enzymes that are involved in the scavenging of reactive oxygen intermediates (ROI) such as superoxide radicals (·O ₂ ⁻ ) and hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂). Recent work has been on transgenic plants that over-express glutathione S-transferases (GST) that also have glutathione peroxidase activity. Transgenic tobacco plants that contain gene constructs that encode two different tobacco GST’s had elevated levels of both GST and GPX activity. Analysis of mature vegetative transgenic tobacco plants that over-express GST/GPX failed to show any increase in paraquat tolerance or protection from photooxidative stress. However, seeds of these GST/GPX-expressing tobacco lines are capable of more rapid germination and seedling growth at low temperatures and at elevated salt concentrations. Reduced levels of lipid peroxidation were noted in GST/GPX-expressing seedling compared to control seedlings under both stressful and non-stressful conditions. In addition, GST/GPX-expressing seedlings significantly accumulated more oxidized glutathione (GSSG) than control seedlings during stress. These characteristics clearly indicate that over-expression of GST/GPX in transgenic seedlings can have substantial effects on their stress tolerance. Furthermore, it appears that this effect is due primarily to the elevated levels of GPX activity.     

海藻糖介导的信号转导与植物抗逆性

海藻糖是一种非还原性二糖,它广泛存在于细菌、真菌、酵母、昆虫、无脊椎动物和植物等生物体内。海藻糖不仅作为碳水化合物的储备,而且还是一个多功能分子。海藻糖作为一种信号分子,启动信号转导级联反应,改变基因表达和酶的活性,与激素也有一定的关系。采用基因工程和通过外源施加的方法增加海藻糖在植物体内的积累可以提高植物的抗逆性,这为提高农作物的抗逆性提供了新的策略。     

Mechanisms and physiological role of polarity in plants

The concept of polarity was the starting point for the attempts of many investigators to understand the principles of differentiation, because the polar organization underlies specific three-dimensional structure of the organism and provides for the integrity and coordination of its functions. The polarity axes are established at the stage of zygote, extending to the developing embryo, and they ??vectorize?? subsequent plant growth and development. Polarization of cells and tissues is crucial for plant morphogenesis, because the emerging morphogenetic gradients provide the basis for differential genome activity at various stages of plant development. This review deals with the polarity phenomena and the mechanisms of symmetry axis formation at the level of cells and plant tissues. The roles of electrical gradients, Ca²⁺ ions, auxin, cytoskeleton, ROP-proteins, phosphoinositides, and microRNA in polarization of cells and tissues are considered.     

转基因改良植物的胁迫耐性

干旱、盐碱和低温等逆境是严重影响栽培植物生产的非生物胁迫因素。导入外源目的的基因已发展成为改良作物对逆境胁迫耐性的新途径。现今已应用于植物胁迫改良的基因包括编码活性氧清除酶类、膜修饰酶类、胁迫诱导蛋白和渗调物质合成酶等基因。     

Heavy metals toxicity in plants: An overview on the role of glutathione and phytochelatins in heavy metal stress tolerance of plants

Plants experience oxidative stress upon exposure to heavy metals that leads to cellular damage. In addition, plants accumulate metal ions that disturb cellular ionic homeostasis. To minimize the detrimental effects of heavy metal exposure and their accumulation, plants have evolved detoxification mechanisms. Such mechanisms are mainly based on chelation and subcellular compartmentalization. Chelation of heavy metals is a ubiquitous detoxification strategy described in wide variety of plants. A principal class of heavy metal chelator known in plants is phytochelatins (PCs), a family of Cys-rich peptides. PCs are synthesized non-translationally from reduced glutathione (GSH) in a transpeptidation reaction catalyzed by the enzyme phytochelatin synthase (PCS). Therefore, availability of glutathione is very essential for PCs synthesis in plants at least during their exposure to heavy metals. Here, I reviewed on effect of heavy metals exposure to plants and role of GSH and PCs in heavy metal stress tolerance. Further, genetic manipulations of GSH and PCs levels that help plants to ameliorate toxic effects of heavy metals have been presented.