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Sulfur Assimilation and Glutathione Metabolism in Plants

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Glutathione in Plant Growth, Development, and Stress Tolerance

Abstract

Sulfur is an essential element for all organisms. Plants utilize soil sulfate to synthesize an amino acid, cysteine, which is used for a variety of sulfur-containing compounds such as glutathione (GSH), methionine, proteins, lipids, coenzymes, and various secondary metabolites. Since animals cannot synthesize organic sulfur compounds from inorganic ones, sulfate assimilation in plants is important for the global sulfur cycle.

GSH is a tripeptide synthesized from the amino acids cysteine, glutamic acid, and glycine. By controlling the redox states of proteins and chemicals, GSH functions in many biological processes including enzymatic activity, detoxification of toxic agents, and eventually influences plant growth, development, and stress management in response to both abiotic and biotic factors. Maintaining an appropriate redox environment, for which GSH levels are crucial, is thus important for plant life.

GSH levels in plant cells are controlled by both synthesis and degradation processes. GSH is synthesized from cysteine by two-step reactions in plastids and cytosol. Since cysteine levels are relatively low in the cells, the sulfate assimilation pathway composed of sulfate uptake, sulfate reduction, and assimilation into cysteine, is a rate-limiting step in GSH synthesis. In this chapter, we review the molecular machineries and regulatory aspects of the sulfur assimilation pathway and GSH metabolism in plants.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI grant Number 15KT0028 (for N.O.O. and A.M.N.) and 24380040 (for A.M.N.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Kyushu University, 6-10-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 812-8581, Japan

    Akiko Maruyama-Nakashita

  2. Institute of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, 3-5-8 Saiwai-cho, Fuchu-shi, Tokyo, 183-8509, Japan

    Naoko Ohkama-Ohtsu

Authors
  1. Akiko Maruyama-Nakashita
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  2. Naoko Ohkama-Ohtsu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Akiko Maruyama-Nakashita .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh

    Mohammad Anwar Hossain

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh

    Mohammad Golam Mostofa

  3. Department of Plant Breeding, CEBAS-CSIC, Murcia, Murcia, Spain

    Pedro Diaz-Vivancos

  4. Department of Botany, University of Otago, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand

    David J Burritt

  5. Department of Applied Biological Science, Kagawa University, Kagawa, Japan

    Masayuki Fujita

  6. RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science, Signaling Pathway Research Unit, Yokohama, Japan

    Lam-Son Phan Tran

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Maruyama-Nakashita, A., Ohkama-Ohtsu, N. (2017). Sulfur Assimilation and Glutathione Metabolism in Plants. In: Hossain, M., Mostofa, M., Diaz-Vivancos, P., Burritt, D., Fujita, M., Tran, LS. (eds) Glutathione in Plant Growth, Development, and Stress Tolerance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66682-2_13

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