Rapid Accumulation of Glutathione During Light Stress in Arabidopsis

Feroza K. Choudhury, Amith R. Devireddy, Rajeev K. Azad, Vladimir Shulaev, Ron Mittler

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

30 Scopus citations

Abstract

Environmental stress conditions can drastically affect plant growth and productivity. In contrast to soil moisture or salinity that can gradually change over a period of days or weeks, changes in light intensity or temperature can occur very rapidly, sometimes over the course of minutes or seconds. We previously reported that in response to rapid changes in light intensity (0-60 s), Arabidopsis thaliana plants mount a large-scale transcriptomic response that includes several different transcripts essential for light stress acclimation. Here, we expand our analysis of the rapid response of Arabidopsis to light stress using a metabolomics approach and identify 111 metabolites that show a significant alteration in their level during the first 90 s of light stress exposure. We further show that the levels of free and total glutathione accumulate rapidly during light stress in Arabidopsis and that the accumulation of total glutathione during light stress is associated with an increase in nitric oxide (NO) levels. We further suggest that the increase in precursors for glutathione biosynthesis could be linked to alterations in photorespiration, and that phosphoenolpyruvate could represent a major energy and carbon source for rapid metabolic responses. Taken together, our analysis could be used as an initial road map for the identification of different pathways that could augment the rapid response of plants to abiotic stress. In addition, it highlights the important role of glutathione in these responses.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1817-1826
Number of pages10
JournalPlant and Cell Physiology
Volume59
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 1 2018
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported the National Science Foundation [IOS-1353886, IOS-1063287, IOS-1557787, MCB-1613462] and the University of North Texas, College of Science.

Keywords

  • Glutathione
  • Light stress
  • Metabolomics
  • Nitric oxide
  • Phosphoenolpyruvate
  • Rapid response
  • Reactive oxygen species

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