Nickel: An Overview of Uptake, Essentiality and Toxicity in Plants

Abstract

Nickel even though recognized as a trace element, its metabolism is very decisive for certain enzyme activities, maintaining proper cellular redox state and various other biochemical, physiological and growth responses. Study of the aspects related with uptake, transport and distributive localization of Ni is very important in various cellular metabolic processes particularly under increased nitrogen metabolism. This review article, in core, encompasses the dual behavior of Ni in plants emphasizing its systemic partitioning, essentiality and ill effects. However, the core mechanism of molecules involved and the successive physiological conditions required starting from the soil absorption, neutralization and toxicity generated is still elusive, and varies among the plants.

Growth and Micronutrient Concentration in Maize Plants Under Nickel and Lime Applications

“…For this reason, nickel was registered in the essential micronutrients list. However, high levels of this micronutrient can alter various metabolic activities of the plant including: the ratio of water and mineral nutrients, enzyme inhibition, functioning of the stomata, photosynthetic transport of electrons, and degradation of chlorophyll molecules, consequently reducing the photosynthetic rate and biological yield of plants (YUSUF et al, 2011).…”

“…Normal concentrations of nickel in plant dry matter vary from 0.05 to 10 mg kg -1 in the majority of species (YUSUF et al, 2011). Acidification can increase the absorption and accumulation of nickel in plant roots (ZARKOVIC;BLAGOJEVIC, 2009).…”

Characterization of a cDNA from Beta maritima that confers nickel tolerance in yeast

“…It would have been more informative to perform the expression analysis in separate for young and old tissues. Although it is specifically related to the plant species (Yusuf et al, 2011), there has been some research showing that, nickel as being a highly mobile element, might be immediately transported to newly formed tissues (Riesen and Feller, 2005) Thus, nickel induced induction of NIC6 transcripts, if there is, might have been more transparent in the young root and leaf tissues, compared to the older tissues. But still, using the control samples, which were also, as nickel treated samples, collected both from the young and old tissues rule out this masking effect.…”

“…maritima plants were grown in half-strength Hoagland Solution (Hoagland and Arnon, 1950) in a growth chamber under conditions of 12 h of dark and 12 h of light at 25°C. Earlier studies have shown that nickel treatment between 50 μM and 200 μM to diverse plant species (such as wheat, soybean, Brassica juncea, and Triticum aestivum) resulted in significant toxic effects on plant growth (for a detailed review, see Yusuf et al, 2011) those resulted in reduced shoot growth/mass, lowered shoot length, decreased dry mass, reduced germination rates, chlorosis and necrosis phenotypes etc. We have applied 75 μM NiCl 2 ,which is not toxic level, was applied to the plants for seven days, leaf and root samples were collected every 24 h. Total RNA isolation was performed using the Invitrogen RNA Isolation Kit (Invitrogen, Germany).…”

“…The uptake of nickel from soil is driven by active and passive transport, but the balance between these two systems was determined depending on to the soil nickel and pH levels (Peralta-Videa et al, 2002;Seregin and Kozhevnikova, 2006). High pH levels (pH N 8) and existence of different metal ions in soil were reported to have an inhibitory effect on nickel uptake (Yusuf et al, 2011), and this might select for active transport over passive diffusion. Even though main rout of nickel translocation in plants is from roots to leaves, direct entry of nickel through the leaf tissue is an alternative and highly dynamic strategy Sajwan and colleagues showed that, 37% of the nickel introduced via leaf tissue, is transported into different tissues (Sajwan et al, 1996).…”