Abstract
Excess radiation is one of frequent natural environmental stresses that plants have to cope with on a daily basis. Therefore, plants have evolved many short- and long-term mechanisms to acclimate to high irradiance and tolerate it. Ureides, generated from purine degradation, have been proposed as compounds involved in environmental stress responses, including altered irradiance. In the present study, high irradiance was used to investigate ureide content and gene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana. Arabidopsis plants shifted to high irradiance showed high content of a specific ureide compound, allantoin. The accumulation of allantoin was associated with increased expression of uricase, an enzyme involved in its production. When an Arabidopsis mutant (aln-3), which constitutively accumulates elevated amounts of allantoin, was exposed to high irradiance, mutant plants demonstrated enhanced tolerance to the stress conditions compared to the wild-type plants. Our results provide evidence that accumulation of the allantoin might contribute in plants response to increased growth irradiance.
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Abbreviations
- AAH:
-
allantoate amidohydrolase
- ABA:
-
abscisic acid
- ACT7 :
-
Actin7
- ALN:
-
allantoinase
- Chl:
-
chlorophyll
- Fv/Fm :
-
variable to maximum chlorophyll fluorescence ratio (maximal quantum yield of PS II photochemistry)
- HI:
-
high irradiance
- HPLC:
-
high performance liquid chromatography
- MI:
-
moderate irradiance
- PPDF:
-
photosynthetic photon flux density
- ROS:
-
reactive oxygen species
- RT-PCR:
-
reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction
- UO:
-
uricase
- XDH:
-
xanthine dehydrogenase
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Acknowledgments: This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada Discovery grants to C.D. Todd and G.R. Gray. S. Irani acknowledges scholarship support provided by the University of Saskatchewan.
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Irani, S., Lobo, J.M., Gray, G.R. et al. Allantoin accumulation in response to increased growth irradiance in Arabidopsis thaliana. Biol Plant 62, 181–187 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10535-017-0747-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10535-017-0747-2