Metal plant biotic stress

Global climate change has caused severe abiotic and biotic stresses, affecting plant growth and food security. The mechanical understanding of plant stress responses is critical for achieving sustainable agriculture. Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) are a group of proteins without unique three-dimensional structures. The environmental sensitivity and structural flexibility of IDPs contribute to the growth and developmental plasticity for sessile plants to deal with environmental challenges. This article discusses the roles of various disordered proteins in plant stress tolerance and resistance, describes the current mechanistic insights into unstructured proteins such as the disorder-to-order transition for adopting secondary structures to interact with specific partners (i...

As an important medicinal plant, Panax notoginseng often suffers from various abiotic and biotic stresses during its growth, such as drought, heavy metals, fungi, bacteria and viruses. In this study, the symptom and physiological parameters of cucumber mosaic virus (CMV)-infected P. notoginseng were analyzed and the RNA-seq was performed. The results showed that CMV infection affected the photosynthesis of P. notoginseng, caused serious oxidative damage to P. notoginseng and increased the activity of several antioxidant enzymes...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that play a vital role in plant responses to abiotic and biotic stresses. Recently, it has been discovered that some primary miRNAs (pri-miRNAs) encode regulatory short peptides called miPEPs. However, the presence of miPEPs in rice, and their functions in response to abiotic stresses, particularly stress induced by heavy metals, remain poorly understood. Here, we identified a functional small peptide (miPEP156e) encoded by pri-miR156e that regulates the expression of miR156 and its target SPL genes, thereby affecting miR156-mediated cadmium (Cd) tolerance in rice...

Mycorrhization has been an integral part of plants since colonization by the early land plants. Over decades, substantial research has highlighted its potential role in improving nutritional efficiency and growth, development and survival of crop plants. However, the focus of this review is trees. Evidence have been provided to explain ecological and physiological significance of mycorrhization in trees. Advances in recent technologies (e.g., metagenomics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, agricultural drones) may open new windows to apply this knowledge in promoting tree growth in forest ecosystems...

Nanotechnology offers the potential to provide innovative solutions for sustainable crop production as plants are exposed to a combination of climate change factors (CO2 , temperature, UV radiation, ozone), abiotic (heavy metals, salinity, drought), and biotic (virus, bacteria, fungi, nematode, and insects) stresses. The application of particular sizes, shapes, and concentration of nanomaterials (NMs) potentially mitigate the negative impacts in plants by modulation of photosynthetic rate, redox homeostasis, hormonal balance, and nutrient assimilation through upregulation of anti-stress metabolites, antioxidant defense pathways, and genes and genes network...

BACKGROUND: Plant microbiome acts as an interface between plants and their environment, aiding in the functioning of the ecosystem, such as protection against abiotic and biotic stress along with improving nutrient uptake. The rhizosphere is an essential interface for the interaction between plants and microbes and plays a substantial part in the removal as well as uptake of heavy metals and antibiotics from contaminated locations. Eichhornia crassipes is a promising plant that contains a rich community of microbes in its rhizosphere...

Contamination of the soil with non-essential metals and metalloids is a serious problem in many regions of the world. These non-essential metals and metalloids are toxic to all organisms impacting crop yields and human health. Crop plants exposed to high concentrations of these metals leads to perturbed mineral homeostasis, decreased photosynthesis efficiency, inhibited cell division, oxidative stress, genotoxic effects and subsequently hampered growth. Plants can activate epigenetic and epitranscriptomic mechanisms to maintain cellular and organism homeostasis...

The world, a famished planet with an overgrowing population, requires enormous food crops. This scenario compelled the farmers to use a high quantity of synthetic fertilizers for high food crop productivity. However, prolonged usage of chemical fertilizers results in severe adverse effects on soil and water quality. On the other hand, the growing population significantly consumes large quantities of poultry meats. Eventually, this produces a mammoth amount of poultry waste, chicken feathers. Owing to the protein value of the chicken feathers, these wastes are converted into protein hydrolysate and further extend their application as biostimulants for sustained agriculture...

Plants, being sessile, have developed complex signaling and response mechanisms to cope with biotic and abiotic stressors. Recent investigations have revealed the significant contribution of phytohormones in enabling plants to endure unfavorable conditions. Among these phytohormones, jasmonic acid (JA) and its derivatives, collectively referred to as jasmonates (JAs), are of particular importance and are involved in diverse signal transduction pathways to regulate various physiological and molecular processes in plants, thus protecting plants from the lethal impacts of abiotic and biotic stressors...

Climate change imposes various environmental stresses which substantially impact plant growth and productivity. Salinity, drought, temperature extremes, heavy metals, and nutritional imbalances are among several abiotic stresses contributing to high yield losses of crops in various parts of the world, resulting in food insecurity. Many interesting strategies are being researched in the attempt to improve plants' environmental stress tolerance. These include the application of nanoparticles, which have been found to improve plant function under stress situations...

The global healthcare market in the post-pandemic era emphasizes a constant pursuit of therapeutic, adaptogenic, and immune booster drugs. Medicinal plants are the only natural resource to meet this by supplying an array of bioactive secondary metabolites in an economic, greener and sustainable manner. Driven by the thrust in demand for natural immunity imparting nutraceutical and life-saving plant-derived drugs, the acreage for commercial cultivation of medicinal plants has dramatically increased in recent years...

This editorial summarizes the main scientific contributions from 11 papers comprising the Special Issue (SI) "Molecular Basis of Crops and Fruit Plants in Response to Stress". Here, we collected papers from different research groups encompassing molecular studies from monocots (ginger, rice, maize) and eudicots (common hazel, cowpea, pepper, soybean, tomato) species submitted to abiotic stresses as heat, cold, salt, drought, and heavy metals or biotic stresses induced by different viruses, such as BPEV , PepGMV , PMMoV , and TEV ...

Lead is a very toxic and futile heavy metal for rice plants because of its injurious effects on plant growth and metabolic processes. Polyploidy or whole genome doubling increases the ability of plants to withstand biotic and abiotic stress. Considering the beneficial effects of nanoparticles and tetraploid rice, this research was conducted to examine the effectiveness of tetraploid and titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) in mitigating the toxic effects of lead. A diploid (E22-2x) and it's tetraploid (T-42) rice line were treated with Pb (200 μM) and TiO2 NPs (15 mg L-1 )...

Soil microbial communities play a key role in plant nutrition and stress tolerance. This is particularly true in sites contaminated by trace metals, which often have low fertility and stressful conditions for woody plants in particular. However, we have limited knowledge of the abiotic and biotic factors affecting the richness and composition of microbial communities inhabiting the rhizosphere of plants in contaminated sites. Using high-throughput amplicon sequencing, we studied the rhizospheric bacterial and fungal community structures of 14 woody plant families planted in three contrasting sites contaminated by metals (Pb, Cd, Zn, Mn, Fe, S)...

SPL (SQUAMOSA promoter binding proteins-like) are plant-specific transcription factors that play essential roles in a variety of developmental processes as well as the ability to withstand biotic and abiotic stresses. To date, numerous species have been investigated for the SPL gene family, but so far, no SPL family genes have been thoroughly identified and characterized in the sunflower (Helianthus annuus). In this study, 25 SPL genes were identified in the sunflower genome and were unevenly distributed on 11 chromosomes...

Cotton (Gossypium spp.) is a globally significant crop that provides natural fibers for the textile industry and also an important oil and biopharmaceutical resources. However, the production of cotton faces substantial challenges due to various biotic and abiotic stress factors that can negatively impact cotton growth, yield, and fiber quality. This review offers a comprehensive overview of the effects of biotic stress factors, such as insect pests, bacterial, fungal, and viral pathogens, and nematodes, as well as abiotic stress factors, including extreme hot and cold temperature, drought, toxicity induced by heavy metal and salinity, on the antioxidant systems in cotton...

Brassinosteroids (BRs) influence a variety of physiological reactions and alleviate different biotic and abiotic stressors. Turnip seedlings were grown with the goal of further exploring and expanding their function in plants under abiotic stress, particularly under heavy metal toxicity (lead stress). This study's objective was to ascertain the role of applied 28-homobrassinolide (HBL) in reducing lead (Pb) stress in turnip plants. Turnip seeds treated with 1, 5, and 10 µM HBL and were grown-up in Pb-contaminated soil (300 mg kg-1 )...

Metallothioneins (MTs) are a family of small proteins rich in cysteine residues. The sulfhydryl group of metallothioneins can bind to metal ions, maintaining metal homeostasis and protecting the cells from damage caused by toxic heavy metals. Moreover, MTs can function as reactive oxygen species scavengers since cysteine thiols undergo reversible and irreversible oxidation. Here, we identified 21 metallothionein genes ( AsMT s) in the oat ( Avena sativa L.) genome, which were divided into four types depending on the amino acid sequences of putative proteins encoded by identified genes...

Microbes hold immense potential, based on the fact that they are widely acknowledged for their role in mitigating the detrimental impacts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which were extensively employed during the Green Revolution era. The consequence of this extensive use has been the degradation of agricultural land, soil health and fertility deterioration, and a decline in crop quality. Despite the existence of environmentally friendly and sustainable alternatives, microbial bioinoculants encounter numerous challenges in real-world agricultural settings...

A major obstacle to agricultural production and yield quality is heavy metal contamination of the soil and water, which leads to lower productivity and quality of crops. The situation has significantly worsened as a result of the growing population and subsequent rise in food consumption. The growth of nutrient-rich plants is hampered by lead (Pb) toxicity in the soil. Brassica oleracea L. (broccoli) is a prominent vegetable crop in the Brassicaceae family subjected to a number of biotic and abiotic stresses that dramatically lower crop yields...