Root performance represents a target factor conditioning plant development under drought conditions. Moreover, recent root phenotyping studies remark relevant differences on functionality of the different root types. However, despite its relevance, the performance of different types of roots such as primary/taproot (tapR) and lateral/fibrous roots (fibR) under water stress conditions is largely unknown. In the current study, the impact of water stress on target C and N metabolism (namely sucrose and proline) processes were characterized in tapR and fibR of Medicago truncatula plants exposed to different water stress severity regimes (moderate versus severe). While both root types exhibit some common responses to face water stress, the study highlighted important physiological and metabolic differences between them.The tapR proved to have an essential role on carbon and nitrogen partitioning rather than just on storage. Moreover, this root type showed a higher resilience towards water deficit stress.Sucrose metabolization at sucrose synthase level was early blocked in this tissue together with a selective accumulation of some amino acids such as proline and branched chain amino acids, which may act as alternative carbon sources under water deficit stress conditions. The decline in respiration, despite the over-accumulation of carbon compounds, suggests a modulation at sucrose cleavage level by sucrose synthase and invertase. These data not only provide new information on the carbon and nitrogen metabolism modulation upon water deficit stress but also on the different role, physiology, and metabolism of the taproot and fibrous roots. In addition, obtained results highlight the fact that both root types show distinct performance under water deficit stress; this factor can be of great relevance to improve breeding programs for increasing root efficiency under adverse conditions.

Red pigmentation in the lower surface of leaves is a common phenomenon in herb species growing in temperate and tropical forests. Nevertheless, its function is still not completely understood. We studied this process of reddening in the leaves of Saxifraga hirsuta living in a beech forest, to establish its relation with environmental factors and its potential function. We observed that the reddening occurs during autumn and that it strongly reduces the amount of light that can pass through the leaf. The dark environment generated underneath might play a role in the biotic interactions by inhibiting vital processes of competitors.

Legumes, account for around 27% of the world's primary crop production and can be classified based on their use and traits into grain and forage legumes. Legumes can establish symbiosis with N-fixing soil

The origin of resistance to detergent solubilization in certain membranes, or membrane components, is not clearly understood. We have studied the solubilization by Triton X-100 of binary mixtures composed of egg sphingomyelin (SM) and either ceramide, diacylglycerol, or cholesterol. Solubilization has been assayed in the 4-50°C range, and the results are summarized in a novel, to our knowledge, form of plots, that we have called temperature-solubilization diagrams. Despite using a large detergent excess (lipid/detergent 1:20 mol ratio) and extended solubilization times (24-48 h) certain mixtures were not amenable to Triton X-100 solubilization at one or more temperatures. DSC of all the lipid mixtures, and of all the lipid + detergent mixtures revealed that detergent resistance was associated with the presence of gel domains at the assay temperature. Once the system melted down, solubilization could occur. In general adding high-melting lipids limited the solubilization, whereas the addition of low-melting lipids promoted it. Lipidomic analysis of Madin-Darby canine kidney cell membranes and of the corresponding detergent-resistant fraction indicated a large enrichment of the nonsolubilized components in saturated diacylglycerol and ceramide. SM-cholesterol mixtures were special in that detergent solubilization was accompanied, for certain temperatures and compositions, by an independent phenomenon of reassembly of the partially solubilized lipid bilayers. The temperature at which lysis and reassembly prevailed was ∼25°C, thus for some SM-cholesterol mixtures solubilization occurred both above and below 25°C, but not at that temperature. These observations can be at the origin of the detergent resistance effects observed with cell membranes, and they also mean that cholesterol-containing detergent-resistant membrane remnants cannot correspond to structures existing in the native membrane before detergent addition.

During moderate drought stress, plants can adjust by changes in the protein profiles of the different organs. Plants transport and modulate extracellular stimuli local and systemically through commonly induced inter- and intracellular reactions. However, most proteins are frequently considered, cell and organelle specific. Hence, while signaling molecules and peptides can travel systemically throughout the whole plant, it is not clear, whether protein isoforms may exist ubiquitously across organs, and what function those may have during drought regulation. By applying shotgun proteomics, we extracted a core proteome of 92 identical protein isoforms, shared ubiquitously amongst several Medicago truncatula tissues, including roots, phloem sap, petioles, and leaves. We investigated their relative distribution across the different tissues and their response to moderate drought stress. In addition, we functionally compared this plant core stress responsive proteome with the organ-specific proteomes. Our study revealed plant ubiquitous protein isoforms, mainly related to redox homeostasis and signaling and involved in protein interaction networks across the whole plant. Furthermore, about 90% of these identified core protein isoforms were significantly involved in drought stress response, indicating a crucial role of the core stress responsive proteome (CSRP) in the plant organ cross-communication, important for a long-distance stress-responsive network. Besides, the data allowed for a comprehensive characterization of the phloem proteome, revealing new insights into its function. For instance, CSRP protein levels involved in stress and redox are relatively more abundant in the phloem compared to the other tissues already under control conditions. This suggests a major role of the phloem in stress protection and antioxidant activity enabling the plants metabolic maintenance and rapid response upon moderate stress. We anticipate our study to be a starting point for future investigations of the role of the core plant proteome. Under an evolutionary perspective, CSRP would enable communication of different cells with each other and the environment being crucial for coordinated stress response of multicellular organisms.

Water-deficit stresses such as drought and salinity are the most important factors limiting crop productivity. Hence, understanding the plant responses to these stresses is key for the improvement of their tolerance and yield. In this study M. truncatula plants were subjected to 250 mM NaCl as well as reduced irrigation (No-W) and 250 g/L polyethylene glycol (PEG)-6000 to induce salinity and drought stress, respectively, provoking a drop to −1.7 MPa in leaf water potential. The whole plant physiology and metabolism was explored by characterizing the stress responses at root, phloem sap and leaf organ level. PEG treatment led to some typical responses of plants to drought stress, but in addition to PEG uptake, an important impairment of nutrient uptake and a different regulation of carbon metabolism could be observed compared to No-W plants. No-W plants showed an important redistribution of antioxidants and assimilates to the root tissue, with a distinctive increase in root proline degradation and alkaline invertase activity. On the contrary, salinity provoked an increase in leaf starch and isocitrate dehydrogenase activity, suggesting key roles in the plant response to this stress. Overall, results suggest higher protection of salt-stressed shoots and non-irrigated roots through different mechanisms, including the regulation of proline and carbon metabolism, while discarding PEG as safe mimicker of drought. This raises the need to understand the effect at the whole plant level of the different strategies employed to apply water-deficit stress.

Medicago truncatula is a forage legume with agricultural but also scientifical interest, being used as a model plant for the study of legumes’ biology. Within a climate change context, it is of great importance to maintain/increase plant yield in stressful growth conditions to meet the requirements of the increasing world population. In order to achieve this, it is mandatory to further understand the adaptive response of plants to water-deficit stress, for which the use of this model plant results of great utility. In the present study, the simultaneous study of various plant organs with particular focus on the root system allows us a more integrative understanding of water-deficit response mechanisms from a whole-plant perspective. The root tissue was studied in Chapter 1, distinguishing between the thick taproot and the much thinner fibrous root. The different behaviour of both root types under well-watered as well as under water-deficit conditions was studied from a physiological and metabolic perspec-tive. This study highlighted the active role of the taproot rather than being considered a mere nutrient storage organ. The taproot showed a more resilient nature towards water-deficit stress than the fibrous root, while sucrose cleavage modulation, together with proline metabolism sug-gested a crucial role of these pathways in the root adaptation to water-deficit stress. In Chapter 2 we aimed to address different water-deficit conditions that can affect plant water status, using iso-osmotical conditions of salinity (NaCl and KCl), lack of irrigation and an osmoticum (PEG). This approach allows us to identify the similarities and differences in the mechanisms involved in the response to each stress at the whole-plant level. While PEG was dismissed as a reliable drought-stress mimicker, NaCl and KCl led to similar responses, with a slightly higher negative effect of KCl on plant metabolism. On the other hand, an emphasis on the shoot and root protection was observed for NaCl and no-irrigation stress, respectively. The study of the phloem sap allowed us to better understand the responses to the different water-deficit conditions at a whole-plant level. In summary, this study provides further insight into the response at the whole-plant level of M. truncatula to water-deficit conditions from a biochemical, metabolic and physiological point of view.

Sarcopenia is characterized by loss of muscle mass and strength in the elderly. Interestingly, astronauts suffer from a sarcopenic-like phenotype due to microgravity, thus effective countermeasures and preventive strategies are needed. Earth precision medicine combined with statistical, co-expression network and pathway analysis enables us to explore gene expression data from people with and without sarcopenia to obtain a list of 21 Key Genes (KGs). We then validated our KGs upon data from human endothelial cells cultured in the International Space Station, and astronauts’ samples from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Inspiration 4 mission. Our results suggest that POMC and GOLGA8R are the most robust biomarkers identified for muscle loss. Finally, a pharmacological screening performed to target our KGs showed that POMC activity can be modulated using phase IV or approved drugs. Combining Earth’s precision medicine with space data is a promising approach to address common conditions related to accelerated aging.