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Arabidopsis desaturase 2 gene is involved in the regulation of cadmium and lead resistance

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Abstract

Aims

It was shown previously that Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) desaturase 2 (ADS2) cDNA was isolated and it was shown that the expression of ADS2 was organ-dependent and up-regulated by low temperature. However, little is known about the role of ADS2 gene in heavy metal resistance in plants. In this study, we showed that ADS2 gene is involved in the regulation of cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) resistance.

Methods

For heavy metal resistance tests, seeds were germinated and grown on 1/2 MS media supplemented with the indicated concentrations of metal ions. To quantify root length, plants were grown vertically in plates. For heavy metal treatments, two-week old wild-type seedlings grown on MS media were treated with cadmium (Cd) or lead (Pb) for 24 h, and then sampled for metal content measurement and qPCR analysis.

Results

ADS2 was strongly repressed by Cd(II), and ads2-1 mutant plants showed increased Cd(II) resistance. A lower Cd content was detected in ads2-1 plants than in wild-type plants subjected to Cd(II) treatment, which was associated with activation in expression of AtPDR8 gene, a pump excluding Cd(II) and/or Cd(II)-containing toxic compounds from the cytoplasm, suggesting that ADS2-mediated Cd(II) resistance is AtPDR8 dependent. We also found that ads2-1 plants showed increased Pb(II) sensitivity, and ADS2 was strongly repressed by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) but not by Pb(II). The ads2-1 mutant showed increased sensitivity to oxidative stresses mediated by H2O2 and paraquat, and higher levels of H2O2 accumulation were observed in leaves of ads2-1 plants than those of wild-type plants when subjected to Pb(II) and H2O2, indicating that ADS2 mediates Pb(II) resistance indirectly by impaired ROS scavenging.

Conclusions

ADS2 gene mediates Cd(II) and Pb(II) resistance, at least in part, through two distinct mechanisms, an AtPDR8-dependent mechanism and a ROS detoxification system-mediated mechanism, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Zhenyi Chen, Hongyong Jian, Jiajia Sun and Yongbin Ren for their technical assistances. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 20777014 and 31070241), the National Transgenic Plant R&D Project of China (2009ZX08009-063B), the Great Project of Natural Science Foundation at Anhui Provincial Education Department (KJ2010ZD04), and the Funds for Creative Research Groups of Hefei University of Technology (2009HGCX0233).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, 230009, China

    Bin Yu, Xiaohui Bian, Jiazhong Qian & Shuqing Cao

  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026, China

    Xueping Chen

  3. Biological Technology Center, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, Anhui, 230036, China

    Rongfu Wang

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  1. Bin Yu
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  2. Xiaohui Bian
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  3. Jiazhong Qian
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  4. Xueping Chen
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  5. Rongfu Wang
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  6. Shuqing Cao
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Correspondence to Rongfu Wang or Shuqing Cao.

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Responsible Editor: Robert Reid.

Bin Yu and Xiaohui Bian contributed equally to this work.

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Yu, B., Bian, X., Qian, J. et al. Arabidopsis desaturase 2 gene is involved in the regulation of cadmium and lead resistance. Plant Soil 358, 289–300 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-012-1186-7

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