Proteomic Analysis of Mature Soybean Seeds from the Chernobyl Area Suggests Plant Adaptation to the Contaminated Environment

Abstract

The explosion in one of the four reactors of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (CNPP, Chernobyl) caused the worst nuclear environmental disaster ever seen. Currently, 23 years after the accident, the soil in the close vicinity of CNPP is still significantly contaminated with long-living radioisotopes, such as (137)Cs. Despite this contamination, the plants growing in Chernobyl area were able to adapt to the radioactivity, and survive. The aim of this study was to investigate plant adaptation mechanisms toward permanently increased level of radiation using a quantitative high-throughput proteomics approach. Soybeans of a local variety (Soniachna) were sown in contaminated and control fields in the Chernobyl region. Mature seeds were harvested and the extracted proteins were subjected to two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE). In total, 9.2% of 698 quantified protein spots on 2-D gel were found to be differentially expressed with a p-value </= 0.05. All differentially expressed spots were excised from the 2-D gels and analyzed by tandem mass spectrometry. Identified differentially expressed proteins were categorized into six main metabolic classes. Most abundant functional classes were associated with protein destination and storage followed by disease and defense. On the basis of the identity of these proteins, a working model for plant adaptation toward radio-contaminated Chernobyl soil conditions was proposed. Our results suggest that adaptation toward heavy metal stress, protection against radiation damage, and mobilization of seed storage proteins are involved in plant adaptation mechanism to radioactivity in the Chernobyl region.

Comparative proteomic approach to identify proteins involved in flooding combined with salinity stress in soybean

“…1c) in our study may also support this idea. Besides functioning as seed storage reserves, their expression under various stresses such as salt (Aghaei et al 2009) and radiation (Danchenko et al 2009), methyl jasmonate treatment (Meuriot et al 2004) indicate a role in plant defense. Together, these results indicate that a proteomic survey could help a seed physiologist determine the functions of unknown proteins.…”

“…Calreticulin is an endoplasmic reticulum protein that functions as a multiprocessing molecule in animal systems (Michalak et al 2009). Although calreticulin has not yet been systematically characterized in plants, it has been shown to play a role in signal transduction that functions during various stresses, including cold (Hashimoto and Komatsu 2007) and radiation (Danchenko et al 2009). Las1 (spot 4) is an essential gene required for bud formation and morphogenesis in yeast (Doseff and Arndt 1995).…”

Using 7 cm immobilized pH gradient strips to determine levels of clinically relevant proteins in wheat grain extracts

“…In the present study we tested the phenol-based extraction protocol (Hurkman and Tanaka, 1986), which also solubilizes membrane proteins often excluded from alcohol-based protein extractions. Previously, our group efficiently used this protocol for the characterization of seed proteins in soybean (Hajduch et al, 2005; Danchenko et al, 2009; Klubicova et al, 2012), canola (Hajduch et al, 2006), castor (Houston et al, 2009), Arabidopsis (Hajduch et al, 2010), and flax (Klubicova et al, 2010, 2013). …”

Heat, Salinity, and Acidity, Commonly Upregulate A1aB1b Proglycinin in Soybean Embryonic Axes

“…However, because this protein shows chaperone activity (Choi et al, 2004), it is possible that acting as a finely tuned sensor of stress, glycinin A1aB1b is efficiently up-regulated to cope with the adverse effects of environmental stressants in general, including heat, salinity and acidity (see text), waterlogging (Alam et al, 2010), Chilling (Cheng et al, 2010, and radioactivity (Danchenko et al, 2009). Reports on other proteins with hexameric structure and chaperone activity, reinforce this idea (Sauer et al, 2004;Lee et al, 2010).…”