Unusual composition of thylakoid membranes of the resurrection plant Boea hygroscopica: Changes in lipids upon dehydration and rehydration

Abstract

1995, Unusual composition of thylakoid membranes of the resurrection plant Boea hygroscopica: Changes in lipids upon dehydration and rehydration. -Physiol. Plant. 94: 135-142.Boea hygroscopica is a resurrection plant that is able to pass from biosis to anabiosis and vice versa following slow dehydration, but loses this ability following a rapid water loss. Fresh leaves were detached from plants grown in well-watered conditions and subjected to either rapid or slow dehydration and rehydration. Upon rehydration only slowly dried leaves revived. Analysis of thyiakoid membranes revealed a rather small amount of total lipids (1,4-2 ^mol g"' dry weight) in comparison with other flowering plants. The main glycolipid was digalactosyldiacylglycerol (DGDG) rather than monogalactosyldiacylglycerol (MGDG) as is common in higher plants. Linoleic acid was the main fatty acid (30-40 mol% of total fatty acids), while linolenic acid was present from 14 to 26 mol%. In both the fresh and rehydrated leaves nearly all lipid components were present in similar amounts. Following dehydration the DGDG/ MGDG molar ratio, which was 1.1 in control and rehydrated leaves, doubled by the end of the rapid drying period and was three times as high in slowly dried leaves. The total polar lipid'free sterol molar ratio as well as the free fatty acid level assumed the highest values in the rapidly dehydrated leaves. A shifl towards the more unsaturated fatty acids was observed in all lipid classes upon dehydration irrespective of whether it was slow or rapid. Our data show only small differences between rapidly and slowly dehydrated leaves which can be correlated to the capacity of slowly dehydrated leaves to revive.

Metabolic profiling of the resurrection plant Haberlea rhodopensis during desiccation and recovery

“…Our data confirm the high abundance of sitosterol at full dry state reported earlier for H. rhodopensis and Ramonda serbica (Stefanov et al 1992, Quartacci et al 2002. Linolenic acid was the main fatty acid in our study similar to earlier studies with H. rhodopensis (Stefanov et al 1992) and other resurrection species from the same Gesneriaceae family -Boea hygroscopica (Navari-Izzo et al 1995) and R. serbica, (Stefanov et al 1992, Stevanovic et al 1992, Quartacci et al 2002. Being predominant (almost 50% of the total set) linoleic acid appears to be responsible for the relative decrease of total FA pool during the study.…”

“…In some resurrection plants a reversible decrease in fatty acid unsaturation was observed during desiccation (Quartacci et al 2002) while in B. hygroscopica and S. stapfianus an increase of the same trait was found (Navari-Izzo et al 1995, Quartacci et al 1997. In our case, we found no remarkable changes in fatty acid unsaturation during stress and recovery.…”

Abscisic acid modifies the changes in lipids brought about by water stress in the moss Atrichum androgynum

“…There have also been a number of reports that water stress causes a change in galactosylglyceride metabolism in different plants (Pham Thi et al, 1985;El-Hafid et al, 1989;Tarano et al, 1993;Sahsah et al, 1998). In particular, a decline in MGDG causes an increase in the DGDG-MGDG ratio (Navari-Izzo et al, 1995;Quartacci et al, 1997) in excellent agreement with our data (Fig. 2).…”

Increasing atmospheric CO2 reduces metabolic and physiological differences between isoprene‐ and non‐isoprene‐emitting poplars

“…A shift toward unsaturation of the fatty acid component can provide stress tolerance to abiotic factors such as drought (e.g. Navari-Izzo et al, 2006) and high temperature (e.g. Gombos et al, 1994;Sato et al, 1996;Burgos et al, 2011), although it is often linked to low-temperature acclimation.…”