DEMEtRA · DEcoding Metabolic Effectors in plant sTress Response and Acclimation

DEcoding Metabolic Effectors in plant sTress Response and Acclimation

Contrary to animals, plants are sessile organisms, unable to run away from danger or move to environments offering better living conditions. Instead, they have evolved various strategies of adaptation to the existing conditions, by modulating their growth and energy use via chemical reactions. Indeed, they can produce several protective molecules, such as pigments and toxic compounds, to limit light damage or fight predators. Many of the most common plant defense strategies involve production of reactive oxygen species (or ROS) which are highly reactive molecules used both for plant stress signaling and as weapons. However, the redox metabolism of plants leading to the production and management of ROS is still poorly understood, especially for what concerns the two redox couples NAD/NADH and NADP/NADPH (hereafter called NAD(P)/H). These are often referred to as the main redox couples governing primary metabolism, as they are involved in key energetic pathway such as the glycolysis, DNA and RNA biosynthesis and the pentose phosphate pathway, but their role in orchestrating ROS-dependent stress responses is still under investigated. This is mainly due to the fact that NAD(P)/H biosynthesis in plants is still not fully characterized and because NAD(P)/H levels are difficult to measure in vivo by non-destructive biochemical assays. The DEMEtRA project, fruit of a combination of biochemical assays and fluorescence live imaging techniques, aimed at unravelling the roles of redox balance in plant adaptation to stress (in particular biotic stress) and development, mainly focusing on NAD(P)/H metabolism, by leveraging some of the pitfalls hindering the role of NAD/P)/H in plant stress responses and adaptation. The project also aimed at discovering how the NAD(P)/H-dependent redox regulation under stress has evolved in the green lineage (including green algae and plants).

Data: CORDIS, © European Union