Drought-Responsive Mechanisms in Plant Leaves Revealed by Proteomics

Abstract

Plant drought tolerance is a complex trait that requires a global view to understand its underlying mechanism. The proteomic aspects of plant drought response have been extensively investigated in model plants, crops and wood plants. In this review, we summarize recent proteomic studies on drought response in leaves to reveal the common and specialized drought-responsive mechanisms in different plants. Although drought-responsive proteins exhibit various patterns depending on plant species, genotypes and stress intensity, proteomic analyses show that dominant changes occurred in sensing and signal transduction, reactive oxygen species scavenging, osmotic regulation, gene expression, protein synthesis/turnover, cell structure modulation, as well as carbohydrate and energy metabolism. In combination with physiological and molecular results, proteomic studies in leaves have helped to discover some potential proteins and/or metabolic pathways for drought tolerance. These findings provide new clues for understanding the molecular basis of plant drought tolerance.

Physiological and Molecular Osmotic Stress Responses in Three Durum Wheat (Triticum Turgidum ssp Durum) Genotypes

“…GS activity in the present study remained unchanged in ON66 and YT13 and was slightly reduced in Maali. The GS-GOGAT pathway, implying two key enzymes (GS and GOGAT), is heavily affected by water deprivation [43]. Immunoblottings showed a considerable abundance of GS2 isoform compared with GS1, regardless of the growth conditions ( Figure 5D), which is an accordance with previous findings [8].…”

“…These drought-responsive mechanisms include gene expression regulation, reactive oxygen species scavenging, carbohydrates metabolism, and nitrogen metabolism [42,43].…”

“…The activity of GS, the abundance of corresponding mRNA and polypeptide contents were monitored in leaves of the three genotypes under osmotic stress. Changes in GS activity and expression (TaGS1 and TaGS2) underline the effect(s) of osmotic stress on nitrogen metabolism, which could be identified as the main reason for biomass reduction [43]. It has been proved that during water deficit, wheat shows a considerable decline of both abundance and activity of GS2 in the youngest leaves [44].…”

The effects of putrescine are partly overlapping with osmotic stress processes in wheat

“…Also in bentgrass the expression of a gene encoding dehydrin RAB15 was up-regulated in response to drought stress, which is an ABA and drought induced molecular chaperone [18]. Besides genes involved in the synthesis of plant hormones, signalling pathways, synthesis of osmoprotectants, those that encode the members of the antioxidant system has been also reported to alter upon water deficit [39]. The abundances of peroxidases (PODs) were also increased in the leaves of drought-tolerant rice cultivar [40].…”

The RNA-Seq-based high resolution gene expression atlas of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) reveals dynamic spatio-temporal changes associated with growth and development

“…Earlier studies demonstrated that protein kinases play a crucial role in abiotic stresses such as drought and salinity (Yang et al, 2008). Induced expression and the role of homocysteine Smethyltransferase under drought stress is well studied (Kale et al, 2015;Mohammadi, Moieni, Hiraga, & Komatsu, 2012;Wang, Cai, Xu, Wang, & Dai, 2016). The role of key genes in growth and development identified in the present study such as E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase, LRX, and protein kinases were supported by earlier studies in different plant species such as Arabidopsis and rice (Draeger et al, 2015;Pokhilko et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2016).…”