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Endogenous melatonin involved in plant salt response by impacting auxin signaling

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Abstract

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The study on melatonin biosynthesis mutant snat1snat2 revealed that endogenous melatonin plays an important role in salt responsiveness by mediating auxin signaling.

Abstract

Melatonin is a pleiotropic signaling molecule, which, besides being involved in multiple growth and developmental processes, also mediates environmental stress responses. However, whether and how endogenous melatonin is involved in salt response has not been determined. In this study, we elucidated the involvement of endogenous melatonin in salt response by investigatiing the impact of salt stress on a double mutant of Arabidopsis (snat1snat2) defective in melatonin biosynthesis genes SNAT1 and SNAT2. This mutant was found to exhibit salt sensitivity, manifested by unhealthy growth, ion imbalance and ROS accumulation under salt stress. Transcriptomic profiles of snat1snat2 revealed that the expression of a large number of salt-responsive genes was affected by SNAT defect, and these genes were closely related to the synthesis of auxin and several signaling pathways. In addition, the salt-sensitive growth phenotype of snat1snat2 was alleviated by the application of exogenous auxin. Our results show that endogenous melatonin may be essential for plant salt tolerance, a function that could be correlated with diverse activity in mediating auxin signaling.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available within the supplementary materials or from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32100298 and No. 32070350), The Excellent Youth Project of Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (YQ2021C001) and The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2572022AW63). We would like to thank Dr Alan K Chang (Wenzhou University) for his helpful discussion and kind effort in revising the language of the manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32100298 and No. 32070350), The Excellent Youth Project of Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (YQ2021C001) and The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2572022AW63).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Saline-Alkali Vegetation Ecology Restoration, Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, 150040, China

    Rongqing Miao, Zhiqi Li, Yue Yuan, Qiuying Pang & Aiqin Zhang

  2. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory for Water Environment and Marine Biological Resources Protection, College of Life and Environmental Science, Wenzhou University, Wenzhou, 325035, China

    Xiufeng Yan

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  1. Rongqing Miao
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  2. Zhiqi Li
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  3. Yue Yuan
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  4. Xiufeng Yan
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  5. Qiuying Pang
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  6. Aiqin Zhang
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Contributions

AQZ and QYP designed the experiments and supervised the research. RQM, ZQL, YY and XFY performed the experiments and analyzed the data. RQM and AQZ wrote the manuscript with contributions from other authors.

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Correspondence to Qiuying Pang or Aiqin Zhang.

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Communicated by Xian Sheng Zhang.

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Miao, R., Li, Z., Yuan, Y. et al. Endogenous melatonin involved in plant salt response by impacting auxin signaling. Plant Cell Rep 43, 33 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-023-03097-4

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