Transcriptional responses to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon-induced stress in Arabidopsis thalianareveal the involvement of hormone and defense signaling pathways

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Adán Colón-Carmona¹  David Weisman¹  Merianne Alkio² 

[1] Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd, 02125, Boston, MA, USA;Institute of Biological Production Systems, Fruit Science Section, Leibniz University Hannover, Herrenhäuser Str 2, D-30419, Hannover, Germany;

关键词: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon;    Salicylic Acid;    Phenanthrene;    Ethylene Biosynthesis;    Ethylene Signaling;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2229-10-59

 received in 2009-10-02, accepted in 2010-04-07,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPolycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are toxic, widely-distributed, environmentally persistent, and carcinogenic byproducts of carbon-based fuel combustion. Previously, plant studies have shown that PAHs induce oxidative stress, reduce growth, and cause leaf deformation as well as tissue necrosis. To understand the transcriptional changes that occur during these processes, we performed microarray experiments on Arabidopsis thaliana L. under phenanthrene treatment, and compared the results to published Arabidopsis microarray data representing a variety of stress and hormone treatments. In addition, to probe hormonal aspects of PAH stress, we assayed transgenic ethylene-inducible reporter plants as well as ethylene pathway mutants under phenanthrene treatment.ResultsMicroarray results revealed numerous perturbations in signaling and metabolic pathways that regulate reactive oxygen species (ROS) and responses related to pathogen defense. A number of glutathione S-transferases that may tag xenobiotics for transport to the vacuole were upregulated. Comparative microarray analyses indicated that the phenanthrene response was closely related to other ROS conditions, including pathogen defense conditions. The ethylene-inducible transgenic reporters were activated by phenanthrene. Mutant experiments showed that PAH inhibits growth through an ethylene-independent pathway, as PAH-treated ethylene-insensitive etr1-4 mutants exhibited a greater growth reduction than WT. Further, phenanthrene-treated, constitutive ethylene signaling mutants had longer roots than the untreated control plants, indicating that the PAH inhibits parts of the ethylene signaling pathway.ConclusionsThis study identified major physiological systems that participate in the PAH-induced stress response in Arabidopsis. At the transcriptional level, the results identify specific gene targets that will be valuable in finding lead compounds and engineering increased tolerance. Collectively, the results open a number of new avenues for researching and improving plant resilience and PAH phytoremediation.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Weisman et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. 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.