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The role of autophagy in alleviating damage of aluminum stress in Arabidopsis thaliana

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Abstract

Aluminum is one of the toxic elements in acid soil which can restrain plant growth. Autophagy, a dynamic process that involves the recycling of the degradation of intracellular materials, can be induced by multiple abiotic stresses in Arabidopsis. However, the relationship between aluminum and autophagy in plant is unclear while it has been reported that aluminum can increase astrocyte autophagy levels in animals. The role of autophagy in aluminum stress response in Arabidopsis was therefore studied. Our results showed that aluminum can increase expression of autophagy-related genes’ level, moreover, autophagy defective mutants were more sensitive to aluminum conditions and showed more serious damages than wild-type plants, including higher oxidative damages and more reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation. Then, inductions of defense-associated genes in autophagy defective mutants were less than that observed in the wild-type plants after aluminum treatment, whereas the former had higher antioxidant enzymes activity. Furthermore, mutants were more compromised in PSII photochemistry and their detached leaves had less ability to stay green under aluminum treatment. These results indicate that aluminum can induce autophagy and the latter is necessary for defense responses to aluminum toxicity in Arabidopsis thaliana, and it may relieve this damage by eliminating the overproduction of ROS.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31470342, 91417305, 31400211), the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2015CB150100) and Sichuan Natural Science Foundation (2015JY0101, 2015JY0223).

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    1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Bio-Resource and Eco-Environment, College of Life Science, State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610064, Sichuan, China

      Han Ren, Ya-nan Li, Fei-fei Zhao, Xiao-jun Pu, Li-jie Wei, Xin Lv, Feng Zhu & Hong-hui Lin

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    Correspondence to Hong-hui Lin.

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    Han Ren and Ya-nan Li have contributed equally to this work.

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    10725_2015_122_MOESM1_ESM.jpg

    Supplementary Figure 1. Autophagy and Al related gene expression in wild-type Arabidopsis under Al treatment at indicated concentration (μmol/L). CK means Arabidopsis transferred to CaCl2 solution in pH 5.8; 0 means Arabidopsis transferred to CaCl2 solution in pH 4.3. 50–200 means Arabidopsis transferred to corresponding AlCl3 concentration in pH 4.3. Error bars indicate mean and standard deviation of values. The significant difference was analyzed by Student’s t test (*P < 0.05, **P < 0.01) and compared to the CK of the same gene. (JPEG 197 kb)

    10725_2015_122_MOESM2_ESM.jpg

    Supplementary Figure 2. Phenotype of wild-type and mutant plants under aluminum treatment. Control, 100 μM CaCl2 solution in pH 4.5; Al treatment, 100 μM AlCl3 solution in pH 4.5. More than five plants were used for each treatment and the picture of one representative plant is shown. (JPEG 932 kb)

    Supplementary Table 1. Primers used for qPCR in this study. (DOCX 14 kb)

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    Ren, H., Li, Yn., Zhao, Ff. et al. The role of autophagy in alleviating damage of aluminum stress in Arabidopsis thaliana . Plant Growth Regul 79, 167–175 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-015-0122-2

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