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Physiology and toxicology of hormone-disrupting chemicals in higher plants

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Abstract

Higher plants are exposed to natural environmental organic chemicals, associated with plant–environment interactions, and xenobiotic environmental organic chemicals, associated with anthropogenic activities. The effects of these chemicals result not only from interaction with metabolic targets, but also from interaction with the complex regulatory networks of hormone signaling. Purpose-designed plant hormone analogues thus show extensive signaling effects on gene regulation and are as such important for understanding plant hormone mechanisms and for manipulating plant growth and development. Some natural environmental chemicals also act on plants through interference with the perception and transduction of endogenous hormone signals. In a number of cases, bioactive xenobiotics, including herbicides that have been designed to affect specific metabolic targets, show extensive gene regulation effects, which are more in accordance with signaling effects than with consequences of metabolic effects. Some of these effects could be due to structural analogies with plant hormones or to interference with hormone metabolism, thus resulting in situations of hormone disruption similar to animal cell endocrine disruption by xenobiotics. These hormone-disrupting effects can be superimposed on parallel metabolic effects, thus indicating that toxicological characterisation of xenobiotics must take into consideration the whole range of signaling and metabolic effects. Hormone-disruptive signaling effects probably predominate when xenobiotic concentrations are low, as occurs in situations of residual low-level pollutions. These hormone-disruptive effects in plants may thus be of importance for understanding cryptic effects of low-dosage xenobiotics, as well as the interactive effects of mixtures of xenobiotic pollutants.

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Abbreviations

ABA:

Abscisic acid

AHL:

N-acyl-l-homoserine lactone

AhR:

Aryl hydrocarbon receptor

AP2:

APETALA 2

CRF:

Cytokinin response factor

2,4-D:

2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid

ERF:

Ethylene-responsive element binding factor

IAA:

Indole-3-acetic acid

NAA:

Naphthalene-1-acetic acid

PAH:

Polycyclic aryl hydrocarbon

PGPR:

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria

PSII:

Photosystem II

ROS:

Reactive oxygen species

SCL:

SCARECROW-like

TF:

Transcription factor

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Acknowledgments

Our research on xenobiotic stress and on plant–pesticide interactions is funded, in part, by the “Ecosphère continentale et côtière” funding programme and the “Ingénierie écologique” interdisciplinary programme from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France) and by the Fondation pour la recherche sur la biodiversité (FRB, France). AAS is supported by a doctoral scholarship from the Brittany regional council (France).

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  1. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR 6553 ECOBIO, Université de Rennes 1, Campus de Beaulieu, bâtiment 14A, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Ivan Couée, Anne-Antonella Serra, Fanny Ramel, Gwenola Gouesbet & Cécile Sulmon

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Correspondence to Ivan Couée.

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Communicated by P. Kumar.

A contribution to the Special Issue: Plant Hormone Signaling.

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Couée, I., Serra, AA., Ramel, F. et al. Physiology and toxicology of hormone-disrupting chemicals in higher plants. Plant Cell Rep 32, 933–941 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-013-1428-z

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