Electrical and chemical signals involved in short-term systemic photosynthetic responses of tobacco plants to local burning

Abstract

Short-term (up to 1 h) systemic responses of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Samsun) plants to local burning of an upper leaf were studied by measuring the following variables in a distant leaf: extracellular electrical potentials (EEPs); gas exchange parameters; fast chlorophyll fluorescence induction; and endogenous concentrations of three putative chemical signaling compounds-abscisic (ABA), jasmonic (JA), and salicylic (SA) acids. The first detected response to local burning in the distant leaves was in EEP, which started to decline within 10-20 s of the beginning of the treatment, fell sharply for ca. 1-3 min, and then tended to recover within the following hour. The measured gasometric parameters (stomatal conductance and the rates of transpiration and CO(2) assimilation) started to decrease 5-7 min after local burning, suggesting that the electrical signals may induce stomatal closure. These changes were accompanied by systemic increases in the endogenous ABA concentration followed by huge systemic rises in endogenous JA levels started after ca. 15 min, providing the first evidence of short-term systemic accumulation of these plant hormones in responses to local burning. Furthermore, JA appears to have an inhibitory effect on CO(2) assimilation. The correlations between the kinetics of the systemic EEP, stomatal, photosynthetic, ABA, and JA responses suggest that (1) electrical signals (probably induced by a propagating hydraulic signal) may trigger chemical defense-related signaling pathways in tobacco plants; (2) both electrical and chemical signals are interactively involved in the induction of short-term systemic stomatal closure and subsequent reductions in the rate of transpiration and CO(2) assimilation after local burning events.

Analysis of the photosynthetic response induced by variation potential in geranium

“…A number of publications have demonstrated the influence of electrical signals on photosynthesis (Fromm and Eschrich 1993;Fromm and Fei 1998;Koziolek et al 2003;Bulychev et al 2004;Lautner et al 2005;Kaiser and Grams 2006;Hlaváčková et al 2006;Fromm and Lautner 2007;Grams et al 2007Grams et al , 2009Krupenina and Bulychev 2007;Krupenina et al 2008;Sukhov et al 2008a, b;Pavlovič et al 2011); however, these results are contradictory. In particular, electrical signals can induce rapid (*minutes) reduction in the CO 2 assimilation rate (Koziolek et al 2003;Lautner et al 2005;Grams et al 2009), a decrease in quantum yields of photosystem I (PSI) (Grams et al 2009) and photosystem II (PSII) (Koziolek et al 2003;Lautner et al 2005;Grams et al 2009), an increase in photochemical fluorescence quenching and a lowering in non-photochemical quenching (Pavlovič et al 2011).…”

“…These signals can induce leaf movement in sensitive plants (Sibaoka 1991), pin2 gene expression (Stanković and Davies 1996;Fisahn et al 2004), total protein synthesis inhibition (Davies and Stankovic 2006), production of ethylene, abscisic and jasmonic acids (Dziubinska et al 2003;Fisahn et al 2004;Hlaváčková et al 2006), changes in phosphate assimilation in roots (Opritov et al 1991), reduction in phloem transport (Fromm and Bauer 1994), unloading of sieve elements (Fromm 1991), respiration rate increase (Filek and Kościelniak 1997), and increased plant nonspecific resistance (Pyatygin et al 2008).…”

Variation potential in higher plants: Mechanisms of generation and propagation

“…15 Propagation of AP and VP affects numerous physiological processes in plants. For example, ESs induce gene expression, [16][17][18] phytohormone synthesis, 17,19,20 phloem transport decrease, 21 changes in root absorption, 11 activation of respiration, [22][23][24][25][26] and inactivation of photosynthesis. 23,24,[26][27][28][29][30][31] Retivin et al 32 hypothesized that the ultimate role of these physiological changes is the increase of plant resistance to stressors.…”

Effect of heat-shock pre-treatment on tomato plants infected by powdery mildew fungus

“…The measured leaflet was harvested and immediately weighed, frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at -80°C. The procedure used for ABA, JA, and SA extraction and purification was as described by Hlaváčková et al (2006) O]JA (supplied by Els Prinsen, University of Antwerp, Belgium) were added as internal tracers for the recovery studies and quantification. The purified samples were quantified by the LC-MS/MS system, as in Bergougnoux et al (2009).…”