Soil water stress affects both cuticular wax content and cuticle-related gene expression in young saplings of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait)

Abstract

BackgroundThe cuticle is a hydrophobic barrier located at the aerial surface of all terrestrial plants. Recent studies performed on model plants, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, have suggested that the cuticle may be involved in drought stress adaptation, preventing non-stomatal water loss. Although forest trees will face more intense drought stresses (in duration and intensity) with global warming, very few studies on the role of the cuticle in drought stress adaptation in these long-lived organisms have been so far reported.ResultsThis aspect was investigated in a conifer, maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Ait.), in a factorial design with two genetic units (two half-sib families with different growth rates) and two treatments (irrigated vs non-irrigated), in field conditions. Saplings were grown in an open-sided greenhouse and half were irrigated three times per week for two growing seasons. Needles were sampled three times per year for cuticular wax (composition and content) and transcriptome (of 11 genes involved in cuticle biosynthesis) analysis. Non-irrigated saplings (i) had a higher cuticular wax content than irrigated saplings and (ii) overexpressed most of the genes studied. Both these trends were more marked in the faster growing family.ConclusionsThe higher cuticular wax content observed in the non-irrigated treatment associated with strong modifications in products from the decarbonylation pathway suggest that cuticular wax may be involved in drought stress adaptation in maritime pine. This study provides also a set of promising candidate genes for future forward genetic studies in conifers.

Genetic control of cuticular wax compounds inEucalyptus globulus

“…The primary alcohol pathway (often referred to as the acyl‐reduction pathway) produces primary alcohols and esters (Samuels et al ., ). There is also the less common β‐ketoacyl pathway, which produces β‐diketones (Post‐Beittenmiller, ; Kunst & Samuels, ; Le Provost et al ., ). This pathway has received far less attention than the others due to its absence in the model species, Arabidopsis (Zhang et al ., ).…”

Leaf cuticular lipids on the Shandong and Yukon ecotypes of saltwater cress, Eutrema salsugineum, and their response to water deficiency and impact on cuticle permeability

“…However, recent studies reveal how the cuticle is, in fact, very responsive to environmental stimuli. Cuticle ultrastructure and chemistry, and cuticle‐associated physiology, function and gene expression, can change dramatically after exposure to drought, salt and related osmotic stresses (Cameron et al , Kim et al , , Kosma et al , Le Provost et al ). Implicitly, the plant cuticle provides a key adaptation for improved growth and survival in climatological drought and other low moisture environments (Chen et al , Seo and Park , Seo et al , Parsons et al ).…”

Unraveling lipid metabolism in maize with time‐resolved multi‐omics data

“…In addition, cytoskeletal organization and sterols determine polar auxin transport and signaling (Yang et al ., ; Li et al ., ), suggestive of how these processes might be intertwined. Stress‐related terms could indicate a role for membrane lipids upon stimulation by biotic and abiotic factors and rearrangement of cutin and cuticular waxes in the leaf surface (Shepherd and Wynne Griffiths, ; Kosma et al ., ; Le Provost et al ., ). In addition, oxylipins (here constituting an enriched GO term) such as jasmonate mediate stress responses and result from the oxidation of FAs (Andreou et al ., ).…”