Iron acquisition strategies in land plants: not so different after all

Abstract

Summary Due to its ability to accept and donate electrons, iron (Fe) is an indispensable component of electron transport chains and a cofactor in many vital enzymes. Except for waterlogged conditions, under which the lack of oxygen prevents oxidation and precipitation of iron as Fe3+ hydroxides, the availability of iron in soils is generally far below the plant's demand for optimal growth. Plants have evolved two phylogenetically separated and elaborately regulated strategies to mobilize iron from the soil, featuring mechanisms which are thought to be mutually exclusive. However, recent studies uncovered several shared components of the two strategies, questioning the validity of the concept of mutual exclusivity. Here, we use publicly available data obtained from the model species rice (Oryza sativa) to unveil similarities and incongruities between co‐expression networks derived from transcriptomic profiling of iron‐deficient rice and Arabidopsis plants. This approach revealed striking similarities in the topographies of the resulting co‐expression networks with relatively minor deviations in the molecular attributes of the comprised genes, which nonetheless lead to different physiological functions. The analysis also discovered several novel players that are possibly involved in the regulation plant adaptation to iron deficiency.

Impact of saline stress on the uptake of various macro and micronutrients and their associations with plant biomass and root traits in wheat

“…Poaceae plants, including wheat, deal with Fe deficiency by increasing the secretion of phytosteroids to target the reduced available Fe concentration in soil (Römheld andMarschner 1986, Grillet andSchmidt 2019), possibly by transforming insoluble Fe-containing compounds into soluble Fe. However, a high Fe concentration was present in the nutrients solution used in the current study, and thus the plants should have not been subjected to Fe deficiency.…”

Roles of Plant-Derived Secondary Metabolites during Interactions with Pathogenic and Beneficial Microbes under Conditions of Environmental Stress

“…These observations strongly suggest that how plants sense and react to nutrient deficiencies in the context of plant secondary metabolites is key to the understanding of these beneficial interactions. Currently, the molecular mechanisms underlying plant responses to low-Pi, -N, and -Fe are described mainly in studies of model plants such as Arabidopsis thaliana and Oryza sativa [12,62,63,64,65,66]. As described above, many studies suggest relationships between nutrient-sensing pathways and plant secondary metabolites.…”

The Combined Strategy for iron uptake is not exclusive to domesticated rice (Oryza sativa)

“…The capability to absorb Fe 2+ would have evolved in O. sativa as an adaptation to flooded paddies, since cultivated rice is well adapted for growth under submerged conditions, in which Fe 2+ is frequently more abundant than Fe 3+ , unlike most graminaceous crops 11,18,21 . Thus, O. sativa is the only plant described as using the CS for Fe uptake to date 22 .…”