Abstract
Whereas severe Cd stress (150 µM Cd) causes root growth arrest as a consequence of marked superoxide generation leading to extensive cell death in the root tips, mild Cd stress (15 µM Cd) evokes morphogenic responses, such as reduced root elongation and radial root expansion, resulting in shorter and thicker roots. Similar to the low Cd concentration-caused mild stress, treatment of roots with either Ba to remove exchangeable or EDTA to remove both exchangeable and tightly bound cations, including Ca and Mg, from the apoplast, induced root growth inhibition and swelling. However, pre-treatment of roots with Ba had a synergistic effect on the development of these mild Cd stress-induced morphogenic responses, but without the development of any other symptoms in the root tips. In turn, EDTA pre-treatment markedly increased the toxicity of Cd in barley root tips via enhanced Cd uptake-mediated superoxide generation, which evoked extensive cell death in the transition zone of root tips identically to the high Cd concentration-induced severe stress. While the mild stress-induced responses were alleviated by the inhibition of auxin signalling pathway, the severe stress-induced symptoms were prevented by Ca, but not Mg, supplementation or by the inhibition of Cd uptake into the root symplasm. Therefore, the appropriate concentration of Ca in the apoplast is crucial to prevent the rapid accumulation of Cd in the symplasm, which above a certain threshold level leads to the huge superoxide generation and cell death.
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Abbreviations
- CW:
-
Cell wall
- GPX:
-
Glutathione peroxidase
- LOX:
-
Lipoxygenase
- PCIB:
-
p-Chlorophenoxyisobutyric acid
- ROS:
-
Reactive oxygen species
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This work was supported by the Grant Agency VEGA, Project No. 2/0039/16. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful criticisms, which improved the manuscript.
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Communicated by G Klobus.
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11738_2017_2350_MOESM1_ESM.tif
Supplementary Fig. 1 A schematic representation of barley root responses after the treatment with 15 or 150 µM Cd in combination with 100 µM Ba or 20 µM EDTA pre-treatment, 50 µM La co-treatment and 5 mM Ca or 50 µM PCIB post-treatment (TIFF 30110 kb)
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Tamás, L., Bočová, B., Huttová, J. et al. Depletion of extracellular calcium increases cadmium toxicity in barley root tip via enhanced Cd uptake-mediated superoxide generation and cell death. Acta Physiol Plant 39, 50 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-017-2350-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-017-2350-8