Macrophytes are critical primary producers in freshwater ecosystem and
provide potential crop output to feed the expanding human population,
they also have been used to mitigate eutrophication and upgrade the
water quality. Aquatic plants adapt themselves to the more complicated,
changeable and unstable conditions compared to terrestrial plants,
especially the fluctuated nutrient environments. Nitrogen (N) and
phosphorus (P) are the key nutrient elements for plants, and their
cycles have been massively altered by anthropogenic activities in
diverse ecosystems. However, there is still a lack of comprehensive
understanding about the adapt mechanisms of N and P stress in aquatic
plants. Therefore, we investigated the response mechanisms at the
molecular, physiological, and morphological levels in the macrophyte
Spirodela polyrhiza under N deficiency, P deficiency, combined N
and P deficiency, and total nutrient deficiency using RNA-seq,
physiological, and biochemical measurements in this study. We found that
the similar response mechanisms are shared between terrestrial plants
and this tiny aquatic plant, such as nutrient deficiency-induced root
system architecture (RSA) changes and photosynthetic inhibition,
interacting of N/P signaling networks and uptake, and the consistent
changes of gene expression profiles at transcriptional level.
Encouragingly, novel findings have been found in S. polyrhiza.
The dramatic accumulation of starch or protein without significantly
growth inhibition under nutrient deficiencies, improve the crop output
of S. polyrhiza. It has a more complex P-signaling network, which
is made up of miR399, PHO2, PHT1 and lncRNAs, and miR399 should be a
dual-function regulator in Pi homeostasis of S. polyrhiza. The N
assimilation process explained the prioritizing usage of ammonium (NH
)-N in duckweed, enhancing its
application to phytoremediation of NH waste water.