Arsenic, a class-1 carcinogenic, is a ubiquitous metalloid found in the atmosphere, soils, natural waters, and organisms. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that hundred million people worldwide might be chronically exposed to arsenic in drinking water at concentrations above the safety standard. Conventionally applied techniques to remove arsenic species show low removal efficiency, high operational costs, and high-energy requirements. The biological methods, especially phytoremediation, could be cost-effective for protecting human health and the environment from toxic metal contamination. Plants, as sessile organisms, have developed an extraordinary capacity to tolerate arsenic through three main strategies: uptake repression, sequestration into the vacuole, or extrusion. Therefore, arsenic perception and tolerance require a coordinated response that involves arsenic transporters, extrusion pumps, vacuole transporters, and the activation of the phytochelatin biosynthetic pathway. For phytoremediation to become a feasible strategy for arsenic removal from contaminated sites, it is essential to completely understand the molecular mechanisms of arsenic uptake, extrusion, and sequestration, as well as how this response is coordinated. The new genome-wide technologies provide a unique opportunity to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying arsenic perception and accumulation in plants that will open up new possibilities for phytoremediation of arsenic-contaminated waters and soils.
Arsenic is one of the most potent carcinogens in the biosphere, jeopardizing the health of millions of people due to its entrance into the human food chain through arsenic-contaminated waters and staple crops, particularly rice. Although the mechanisms of arsenic sensing are widely known in yeast and bacteria, scientific evidence concerning arsenic sensors or components of early arsenic signaling in plants is still in its infancy. However, in recent years, we have gained understanding of the mechanisms involved in arsenic uptake and detoxification in different plant species and started to get insights into arsenic perception and signaling, which allows us to glimpse the possibility to design effective strategies to prevent arsenic accumulation in edible crops or to increase plant arsenic extraction for phytoremediation purposes. In this context, it has been recently described a mechanism according to which arsenite, the reduced form of arsenic, regulates the arsenate/phosphate transporter, consistent with the idea that arsenite functions as a selective signal that coordinates arsenate uptake with detoxification mechanisms. Additionally, several transcriptional and post-translational regulators, miRNAs and phytohormones involved in arsenic signaling and tolerance have been identified. On the other hand, studies concerning the developmental programs triggered to adapt root architecture in order to cope with arsenic toxicity are just starting to be disclosed. In this review, we compile and analyze the latest advances toward understanding how plants perceive arsenic and coordinate its acquisition with detoxification mechanisms and root developmental programs.
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