Nitric oxide and gene regulation in plants

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that nitric oxide (NO), which was first identified as a unique diffusible molecular messenger in animals, plays an important role in diverse physiological processes in plants. Recent progress that has deepened our understanding of NO signalling functions in plants, with special emphasis on defence signalling, is discussed here. Several studies, based on plants with altered NO-levels, have recently provided genetic evidence for the importance of NO in gene induction. For a general overview of which gene expression levels are altered by NO, two studies, involving large-scale transcriptional analyses of Arabidopsis thaliana using custom-made or commercial DNA-microarrays, were performed. Furthermore, a comprehensive transcript profiling by cDNA-amplification fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) revealed a number of Arabidopsis thaliana genes that are involved in signal transduction, disease resistance and stress response, photosynthesis, cellular transport, and basic metabolism. In addition, NO affects the expression of numerous genes in other plant species such as tobacco or soybean. The NO-dependent intracellular signalling pathway(s) that lead to the activation or suppression of these genes have not yet been defined. Several lines of evidence point to an interrelationship between NO and salicylic acid (SA) in plant defence. Recent evidence suggests that NO also plays a role in the wounding/jasmonic acid (JA) signalling pathway. NO donors affect both wounding-induced H2O2 synthesis and wounding- or JA-induced expression of defence genes. One of the major challenges ahead is to determine how the correct specific response is evoked, despite shared use of the NO signal and, in some cases, its downstream second messengers.

Effects of nitrogen on the activity of antioxidant enzymes and gene expression in leaves of Populus plants subjected to cadmium stress

“…However, that nitric oxide (NO) acts as a bioactive signaling molecule in plant responses to heavy metal stress has been reported in many studies (Hassan et al 2005;Floryszak-Wieczorek et al 2006;Grün et al 2006;Arasimowicz & Floryszak-Wieczorek 2007). It was documented that exogenous NO reduces the destructive action of heavy metals, ethylene, and herbicides on plants (Kopyra & Gwózdz 2003).…”

“…As soon as the balance is broken, the overaccumulation of ROS in plants leads to significant damage to the membrane system of plants from a lipid peroxidation reaction, which can increase permeability and conductivity (Gallego et al 1996;Chaoui et al 1997;Kaya et al 2013). Although plant growth, chlorophyll content, stomata opening, transpiration, and photosynthesis have been reported to be inhibited by Cd in nutrient solutions (Jiang & Li 1992;Baryla et al 2001;Drążiewicz & Baszyński 2005;Sun et al 2005), there have also been reports that Cd treatments had no effect on photosynthesis or growth (Greger & Lindberg 1986;Haag-Kerwer et al 1999;Li et al 2005;Zhou & Qiu 2005), and that N was possibly a bioactive signaling molecule in plant responses to heavy metal stress (Hassan et al 2005;Floryszak-Wieczorek et al 2006;Grün et al 2006;Arasimowicz & Floryszak-Wieczorek 2007). However, despite all these studies, the precise mechanisms of how extra N alleviates the toxic symptoms caused by Cd stress remain unknown.…”

Ameliorative effect of exogenous nitric oxide on oxidative metabolism in NaCl treated chickpea plants

“…In the present investigations also, SNP could completely alleviate the adverse effect of NaCl on short duration stress of 2 days, but as the duration of stress was increased to 4 and 6 days alleviation was partial. A protective effect of NO on relative membrane injury has been reported under drought stress (Garcia-Mata and Lamattina 2001; Wang et al 2004;Zhao et al 2008) salt stress (Zhao et al 2004;Zhang et al 2006;Shi et al 2007;Li et al 2008) heavy metal stress (Hsu and Kao 2005;Singh et al 2008) UV stress (Shi et al 2005) wounding (Grun et al 2006) and in ageing and senescence (Tu et al 2003;Hung and Kao 2005).…”

Cross Talk between Reactive Nitrogen and Oxygen Species during the Hypersensitive Disease Resistance Response

“…For example, NO can induce the expression of Phe ammonia lyase and chalcone synthase independently of ROS, while induction of other defense-related genes by NO, such as glutathione-S-transferase and the pathogenesis-related protein 1 (PR-1), was shown to depend on H 2 O 2 and salicylic acid, respectively (Grun et al, 2006). Large-scale cDNA-AFLP and microarray analyses on cellular responses to H 2 O 2 in tobacco and Arabidopsis plants revealed up-regulation of many genes involved in the HR, oxidative stress sensing, and cell death-related signal transduction (Gechev and Hille, 2005).…”