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Root Oxygen Deprivation and Leaf Biochemistry in Trees

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Waterlogging Signalling and Tolerance in Plants

Abstract

Plants are aerobic organisms, that is, they depend on oxygen for their life. Therefore, oxygen deficiency impacts on the biochemical and molecular processes of the plant cell. However, plant cells have evolved inducible strategies to cope with low oxygen stress conditions. When O2 is reduced, energy production in the form of ATP is reduced too. Cells respond to this energy crisis by switching to fermentative metabolism, producing ATP and regenerating NAD+ through the glycolytic and fermentative pathways.

Roots are the organs most easily subject to low O2 stress, but changes in fermentative enzymatic activities are also seen in leaves. Nevertheless, leaves already possess a constitutive expression of these enzymes. Since leaves are the plant organs less likely exposed to low O2 conditions, they should have evolved in addition an alternative role for the enzymes usually related to fermentative metabolism. Leaves seem to have the ability to take advantage of the enzymes of a metabolic pathway commonly useful in parts of the plant which can undergo anoxia or hypoxia stress: they make use of fermentative metabolism in a different way, to limit the damage that stress condition imposes to the whole plant.

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Abbreviations

ABA:

Abscisic acid

ADH:

Alcohol dehydrogenase

ALDH:

Aldehyde dehydrogenase

ANPs:

Anaerobiosis related proteins

GAPDH:

Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase

LDH:

Lactate dehydrogenase

PDC:

Pyruvate decarboxylase

PPi:

Inorganic pyrophosphate

Suc:

Sucrose

SuSy:

Sucrose synthase

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  1. Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via Amendola 2–pad Besta, 42100, Reggio Emilia, Italy

    Laura Arru & Silvia Fornaciari

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  1. Laura Arru
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  2. Silvia Fornaciari
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Correspondence to Laura Arru .

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  1. Dipto. Ortoflorofrutticoltura, Università Firenze, Viale delle Idee 30, Sesto Fiorentino, 50019, Italy

    Stefano Mancuso

  2. School of Agricultural Sciences, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

    Sergey Shabala

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Arru, L., Fornaciari, S. (2010). Root Oxygen Deprivation and Leaf Biochemistry in Trees. In: Mancuso, S., Shabala, S. (eds) Waterlogging Signalling and Tolerance in Plants. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10305-6_9

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