Vitamin E Is Superior to Vitamin C in Delaying Seedling Senescence and Improving Resistance in Arabidopsis Deficient in Macro-Elements

Abstract

Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) are three essential macro-elements for plant growth and development. Used to improve yield in agricultural production, the excessive use of chemical fertilizers often leads to increased production costs and ecological environmental pollution. Vitamins C and E are antioxidants that play an important role in alleviating abiotic stress. However, there are few studies on alleviating oxidative stress caused by macro-element deficiency. Here, we used Arabidopsis vitamin E synthesis-deficient mutant vte4 and vitamin C synthesis-deficient mutant vtc1 on which exogenous vitamin E and vitamin C, respectively, were applied at the bolting stage. In the deficiency of macro-elements, the Arabidopsis chlorophyll content decreased, malondialdehyde (MDA) content and relative electric conductivity increased, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulated. The mutants vtc1 and vte4 are more severely stressed than the wild-type plants. Adding exogenous vitamin E was found to better alleviate stress than adding vitamin C. Vitamin C barely affected and vitamin E significantly inhibited the synthesis of ethylene (ETH) and jasmonic acid (JA) genes, thereby reducing the accumulation of ETH and JA that alleviated the senescence caused by macro-element deficiency at the later stage of bolting in Arabidopsis. A deficiency of macro-elements also reduced the yield and germination rate of the seeds, which were more apparent in vtc1 and vte4, and adding exogenous vitamin C and vitamin E, respectively, could restore them. This study reported, for the first time, that vitamin E is better than vitamin C in delaying seedling senescence caused by macro-element deficiency in Arabidopsis.

Monodopsis subterranea is a source of α‐tocomonoenol, and its concentration, in contrast to α‐tocopherol, is not affected by nitrogen depletion

“…Tocopherol content also doubled in the leaves of the land plant Arabidopsis thaliana under N-limitation (Gaude et al, 2007). Under nitrogen depletion, the chlorophyll content in M. subterranea decreased more than 40 times (Figure 2), which is also in agreement with previous reports in microalgae (Ferreira et al, 2016;Song et al, 2016) and is consistent with the reduction of chlorophyll content in leaves of nitrogendepleted A. thaliana (Gaude et al, 2007;Zhang et al, 2020).…”

Insight into the phytochemical profile and antimicrobial activities of Amomum subulatum and Amomum xanthioides: an in vitro and in silico study

“…It functions as a cofactor for many enzymes, regulates cell division, and influences cell expansion. It also regulates plant senescence ( Paciolla et al., 2019 ; Zhang et al., 2020 ). These results revealed the antioxidant effects of these plants in the DPPH, FRAP, and anti-lipid peroxidation tests.…”

Shade Avoidance 3 Mediates Crosstalk Between Shade and Nitrogen in Arabidopsis Leaf Development

“…The individual gene expression levels were presented as the fold-changes relative to ACTIN7 expression levels (2 –Δ Ct ). The expression level of the seedlings grown under continuous white light (Wc) with normal N level (NN) was normalized into “1.0” ( Zhang et al, 2020b ).…”