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Negative regulation of cadmium tolerance in Arabidopsis by MMDH2

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MMDH2 gene negatively regulates Cd tolerance by modulating reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and the ROS-mediated signaling, thus, affecting the expression of PDR8.

Abstract

The molecular mechanism by which plants respond to stress caused by cadmium (Cd), one of the most toxic heavy metals to plants, is not well understood. Here, we show that MMDH2, a gene encoding mitochondrial malate dehydrogenase, is involved in Cd stress tolerance in Arabidopsis. The expression of MMDH2 was repressed by Cd stress. The mmdh2 knockdown mutants showed enhanced Cd tolerance, while the MMDH2-overexpressing lines were sensitive to Cd. Under normal and Cd stress conditions, lower H2O2 levels were detected in mmdh2 mutant plants than in wild-type plants. In contrast, higher H2O2 levels were found in MMDH2-overexpressing lines, and they were negatively correlated with malondialdehyde levels. In addition, the expression of the PDR8, a gene encoding a Cd efflux pump, increased and decreased in the mmdh2 mutant and MMDH2-overexpressing lines, in association with lower and higher Cd concentrations, respectively. These results suggest that the MMDH2 gene negatively regulates Cd tolerance by modulating reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels and the ROS-mediated signaling, thus, affecting the expression of PDR8.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Wenjia Ma, Yun Meng, Xue Fang, Yuanyuan Wang, and Jiena Xu for their technical assistance.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Numbers 31770284, 31571250, and 31872803).

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Author notes

  1. Xi Wu and Yangyang Han have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Research Center of Bio-Process, Ministry of Education, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Xi Wu, Yangyang Han, Xiangyu Zhu, Alia Shah, Wei Wang, Yibao Sheng, Tingting Fan & Shuqing Cao

  2. School of Food and Biological Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Xi Wu, Yangyang Han, Xiangyu Zhu, Alia Shah, Wei Wang, Yibao Sheng, Tingting Fan & Shuqing Cao

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  1. Xi Wu
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Contributions

SC conceived the original research plans; XW, YH, XZ, WW and AS performed the experiments; SC, XW, and TF and YS designed the experiments and analysed the data; XW and SC wrote the article with contributions of all the authors.

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Correspondence to Shuqing Cao.

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Wu, X., Han, Y., Zhu, X. et al. Negative regulation of cadmium tolerance in Arabidopsis by MMDH2. Plant Mol Biol 101, 507–516 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-019-00923-w

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