Evidence for extensive heterotrophic metabolism, antioxidant action, and associated regulatory events during winter hardening in Sitka spruce

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Lenwood S Heath¹  Jason A Holliday²  Ruth Grene³  Eva Collakova³  Elijah Myers⁴  Curtis Klumas⁴  Haktan Suren⁵ 

[1] Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA;Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA;Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, Virginia Tech, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA;Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, Virginia Tech, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA;Genetics, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, Virginia Tech, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA;Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, 24061, Blacksburg, VA, USA;

关键词: Microarray;    Sitka spruce;    Carbon metabolism;    Cell walls;    Adaptation mechanisms;    Visualization;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2229-13-72

 received in 2012-10-02, accepted in 2013-03-19,  发布年份 2013

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundCold acclimation in woody perennials is a metabolically intensive process, but coincides with environmental conditions that are not conducive to the generation of energy through photosynthesis. While the negative effects of low temperatures on the photosynthetic apparatus during winter have been well studied, less is known about how this is reflected at the level of gene and metabolite expression, nor how the plant generates primary metabolites needed for adaptive processes during autumn.ResultsThe MapMan tool revealed enrichment of the expression of genes related to mitochondrial function, antioxidant and associated regulatory activity, while changes in metabolite levels over the time course were consistent with the gene expression patterns observed. Genes related to thylakoid function were down-regulated as expected, with the exception of plastid targeted specific antioxidant gene products such as thylakoid-bound ascorbate peroxidase, components of the reactive oxygen species scavenging cycle, and the plastid terminal oxidase. In contrast, the conventional and alternative mitochondrial electron transport chains, the tricarboxylic acid cycle, and redox-associated proteins providing reactive oxygen species scavenging generated by electron transport chains functioning at low temperatures were all active.ConclusionsA regulatory mechanism linking thylakoid-bound ascorbate peroxidase action with “chloroplast dormancy” is proposed. Most importantly, the energy and substrates required for the substantial metabolic remodeling that is a hallmark of freezing acclimation could be provided by heterotrophic metabolism.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Collakova et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2013. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.