The Role of Membrane Transporters in Plant Growth and Development, and Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Abstract

Membrane transporters (MTs) are mainly localized at the plasma membrane (PM), tonoplast and vacuolar membrane (VM) of cells in all plant organs. Their work is to maintain the cellular homeostasis by controlling ionic movements across PM channels from roots to upper plant parts, xylem loading and remobilization of sugar molecules from photosynthesis tissues in the leaf (source) to roots, stem and seeds (sink) via phloem loading. The plant’s whole source-to-sink relationship is regulated by multiple transporting proteins in a highly sophisticated manner and driven based on different stages of plant growth and development (PG&D), and environmental changes. The MTs play a pivotal role in PG&D in terms of increased plant height, branches/tiller numbers, enhanced numbers, length and filled panicles per plant, seed yield and grain quality. Dynamic climatic changes disturbed the ionic balance (salt, drought and heavy metals) and sugar supply (cold and heat stress). Due to poor selectivity, some of the MTs also uptake toxic elements in the roots that negatively impact on PG&D, later on also exported to upper parts and then deteriorate the grain quality. As an adaptive strategy, in response to salt and HMs plants activated PM and VM localized MTs that export toxic elements into vacuole, and also translocate in the root’s tips and shoot. However, in case of drought, cold and heat stresses, MTs increased the water and sugar supply to all organs. In this review, we mainly reviewed recent literature from Arabidopsis, halophytes, and major field crops such as rice, wheat, maize and oilseed rape to argue on the global role of MTs in PG&D and abiotic stress tolerance. We also discussed the gene expression level changes and genomic variations within a species as well as within a family in response to developmental and environmental cues.

Molecular membrane separation: plants inspire new technologies

“…Some metals and minerals can be toxic to plants when present in excess and there are many nutrients that are essential for plants to draw up because they are required for plant growth (Table 1). The identities of the many molecular mechanisms in plants that enable the uptake and separation of different metals, minerals and nutrients are of interest for improving crop performance and nutrition, phytoremediation strategies, and informing the development of novel membrane biotechnologies (Pilon‐Smits, 2005; Schroeder et al ., 2013; Mazzolai et al ., 2014; Darestani et al ., 2019; Gill et al ., 2021; Roorkiwal et al ., 2021; Kafle et al ., 2022).…”

“…1) (Paasonen et al, 2013;Ellison et al, 2017;Jasechko, 2018;Zhang, 2020). For example, plant transpiration is estimated to be responsible for 60-90% of terrestrial evapotranspiration (Jasechko et al, 2013;Good et al, 2015;Lian et al, 2018;Nelson et al, 2020), plants absorb half of the solar energy that reaches land surfaces, and each year plants capture and fix around one-third of emissions of carbon dioxide.…”