Higher sterol content regulated by CYP51 with concomitant lower phospholipid content in membranes is a common strategy for aluminium tolerance in several plant species

Abstract

HighlightHigher sterol content regulated by CYP51 with concomitant lower phospholipid contents in root tips results in higher aluminium tolerance. This strategy is common to different varieties of plant species.

Suppressing Farnesyl Diphosphate Synthase Alters Chloroplast Development and Triggers Sterol-Dependent Induction of Jasmonate- and Fe-Related Responses

“…These results confirmed the existence of a close relationship between plant sterol metabolism and Fe homeostasis, a connection that is well established in other organisms such as fungi (Craven et al, 2007;Blatzer et al, 2011;Hosogaya et al, 2013;Thomas et al, 2013;Chung et al, 2014;Vasicek et al, 2014) but is much less known in plants (Urbany et al, 2013). In general, depletion of sterol biosynthesis has been correlated with both higher membrane permeability and increased uptake of metal ions in roots, although the underlying molecular mechanism remains unknown (Diener et al, 2000;Khan et al, 2009;Urbany et al, 2013;Wagatsuma et al, 2015). These observations argue against the possibility that the Fe deficiencyrelated gene expression response may be a direct consequence of the impact of reduced sterol levels on membrane permeability.…”

“…Some recent reports also point toward a role for sterols in proper plastid development (Babiychuk et al, 2008;Kim et al, 2010;Gas-Pascual et al, 2015). As key components of cell membranes, sterols are dynamic modulators of their biophysical properties, so that changes in the composition of sterols affect membrane fluidity and permeability (Roche et al, 2008;Grosjean et al, 2015) and, therefore, modulate the activity of membranebound proteins (Carruthers and Melchoir, 1986;Cooke and Burden, 1990;Grandmougin-Ferjani et al, 1997) and the plant adaptive responses to different types of abiotic and biotic stress, including tolerance to thermal stress (Hugly et al, 1990;Beck et al, 2007;Senthil-Kumar et al, 2013), drought (Posé et al, 2009Kumar et al, 2015), metal ions (Urbany et al, 2013;Wagatsuma et al, 2015), and hydrogen peroxide (Wang et al, 2012a), and to bacterial and fungal pathogens (Griebel and Zeier, 2010;Wang et al, 2012b;Kopischke et al, 2013).The embryo-lethal phenotype of the Arabidopsis fps1/fps2 double knockout mutants makes it very difficult to assess the biological role of FPP biosynthesis in postembryonic plant development. To overcome this drawback, we generated conditional knockdown Arabidopsis mutants using a chemically inducible artificial microRNA (amiRNA)-based gene-silencing approach to down-regulate FPS gene expression.…”

Breeding Maize for Tolerance to Acidic Soils: A Review

“…The most important internal tolerance mechanisms are Al-binding proteins, the chelation of Al using organic acids (such as citric acid) and other organic ligands in the cytosol, the compartmentalization or sequestration of Al in the vacuoles, the evolution of Al-tolerant enzymes (such as Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate-specific isocitrate dehydrogenase), elevated enzyme activity [37,86,87], and the Al-induced synthesis of callose (such as 1, 3-glucan) [78,88]. The phospholipid composition of the plasma membrane plays an important role in Al toxicity since it creates a negative charge on the surface of the membrane and increases the sensitivity to Al [79,89].…”

Plant Glycosides and Glycosidases: A Treasure-Trove for Therapeutics

“…In addition, tolerance to aluminum is shown to be influenced positively by the high sterol and low phospholipid contents in the root tip of plants. This results in a less negatively charged plasma membranes, tolerating better aluminum (Wagatsuma et al, 2014). At last, drought tolerance is also associated with sterol composition of the plants as studied via using the drought hypersensitive/squalene epoxidase 1-5 mutants in Arabidopsis (Posé et al, 2009).…”