Plant salt stress status is transmitted systemically via propagating calcium waves

Journal Article · Tue Apr 29 00:00:00 EDT 2014 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404895111· OSTI ID:1164926

Stephan, Aaron B. ^[1]; Schroeder, Julian I. ^[1]

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1. Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States). Div. of Biological Sciences, Cell and Developmental Biology Section

The existence and relevance of rapid long distance signaling in plants is evident to any observer of the nastic movements of the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) or the sensitive plant (Mimosa pudica). However, all plants require the transmission of sensory information from the site of perception to other tissues to adjust their physiological states according to their environment. It is becoming increasingly apparent that rapid long-distance signals exist throughout the plant kingdom and may be responsible for initiating a multitude of physiological responses: electrical “action potentials” have been shown to convey wounding and saltstress information from leaf-to-leaf (1, 2); a “hydraulic signal” transmitted by the direction of water movement within the xylem can mediate long-distance signaling of water stress experienced by the roots to the leaves in Arabidopsis (3); and reactive oxygen species (ROS) have been shown to propagate across a plant and carry stimulus-specific information to a variety of stresses (4). In PNAS, Choi et al. (5) use elegant approaches and present advances demonstrating that calcium can function as a long-distance signaling messenger, propagating in waves from roots and carrying salt-stress signals to induce expression of salt tolerance genes in leaves.

• Research Organization: Life Sciences Research Foundation, Baltimore, MD (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0007113
• OSTI ID: 1164926
• Journal Information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 111, Issue 17; ISSN 0027-8424
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (United States)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES