Unveiling the Redox Control of Plant Reproductive Development during Abiotic Stress

Abstract

Plants being sessile in nature are often challenged to various abiotic stresses including temperature fluctuations, water supply, salinity, and nutrient availability. Exposure of plants to such environmental perturbations result in the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in cells. To scavenge ROS, enzymatic and molecular antioxidants are produced at a cellular level. ROS act as a signaling entity at lower concentrations maintaining normal growth and development, but if their levels increase beyond certain threshold, they produce toxic effects in plants. Some developmental stages, such as development of reproductive organs are more sensitive to abiotic stress than other stages of growth. As success of plant reproductive development is directly correlated with grain yield, stresses coinciding with reproductive phase results in the higher yield losses. In this article, we summarize the redox control of plant reproductive development, and elaborate how redox homeostasis is compromised during abiotic stress exposure. We highlight why more emphasis should be given to understand redox control of plant reproductive organ development during abiotic stress exposure96to engineer crops with better crop yield. We specifically discuss the role of ROS as a signaling molecule and its cross-talk with other signaling molecules such as hormones and sugars.

Selenium-Enriched Pollen Grains of Olea europaea L.: Ca2+ Signaling and Germination Under Oxidative Stress

“…Our results, however, indicate that the pollen obtained from the olive trees fertilized with Se, compared to the controls, consisted of about 40% of organic Se, thus suggesting that the inorganic form Se-enriched in the crops was metabolically and largely converted into Se-methionine (about 90%) and into other organic forms such as SeCys and MetSeCys. The ability of Se-enriched pollen to tolerate oxidative stress (germination efficiency around 60% in Se-enriched pollen compared to 30% in the control with 1 mM H 2 O 2 ) is particularly important for agricultural productivity, based on multiple abiotic factors that can lead to an excessive ROS production (Hasanuzzaman et al, 2013;Zinta et al, 2016;Fahd et al, 2017) and the observation made by others that show that abiotic stresses of different nature can inevitably lead to an excessive accumulation of ROS and, consequently, to pollen sterility (Lazzaro et al, 2005). Furthermore, it should be noted that Se-fertilization, despite having produced a total content of Se in the pollen about 11 times that of the untreated crops, did not affect the germination rates in the absence of oxidative stress.…”

Genome-Wide Identification and Characterization of MADS-box Family Genes Related to Floral Organ Development and Stress Resistance in Hevea brasiliensis Müll. Arg.

“…Understanding the flowering regulation of H. brasiliensis is important for accelerating the breeding process of this species. Based on studies of Arabidopsis and other plants, extensive efforts have been devoted to clarifying the molecular mechanism of reproductive development in plants [48,49], and techniques such as RT-qPCR and high-throughput RNA sequencing have been used in many transcriptional-level studies to identify the genes that regulate the metabolism of plant reproductive development. However, available information about TFs related to reproductive development in H. brasiliensis is still limited.…”

Systems biology approach identifies functional modules and regulatory hubs related to secondary metabolites accumulation after transition from autotrophic to heterotrophic growth condition in microalgae

“…Therefore, engineering these TFs would be a potential approach to develop new strain with improved secondary metabolites accumulation ability. There is also evidence that SBP is implicated in redox clean up [37]. Moreover, many TFs related to photosynthetic carbon fixation such as MYB-related TFs is up-regulated with the same pattern across developmental phases.…”