Huchzermeyer B, Menghani E, Khardia P, Shilu A. Metabolic Pathway of Natural Antioxidants, Antioxidant Enzymes and ROS Providence.
Antioxidants (Basel) 2022;
11:antiox11040761. [PMID:
35453446 PMCID:
PMC9025363 DOI:
10.3390/antiox11040761]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/14/2022] [Revised: 04/04/2022] [Accepted: 04/08/2022] [Indexed: 02/05/2023] Open
Abstract
Based on the origin, we can classify different types of stress. Environmental factors, such as high light intensity, adverse temperature, drought, or soil salinity, are summarized as abiotic stresses and discriminated from biotic stresses that are exerted by pathogens and herbivores, for instance. It was an unexpected observation that overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is a common response to all kinds of stress investigated so far. With respect to applied aspects in agriculture and crop breeding, this observation allows using ROS production as a measure to rank the stress perception of individual plants. ROS are important messengers in cell signaling, but exceeding a concentration threshold causes damage. This requires fine-tuning of ROS production and degradation rates. In general, there are two options to control cellular ROS levels, (I) ROS scavenging at the expense of antioxidant consumption and (II) enzyme-controlled degradation of ROS. As antioxidants are limited in quantity, the first strategy only allows temporarily buffering of a certain cellular ROS level. This way, it prevents spells of eventually damaging ROS concentrations. In this review, we focus on the second strategy. We discuss how enzyme-controlled degradation of ROS integrates into plant metabolism. Enzyme activities can be continuously operative. Cellular homeostasis can be achieved by regulation of respective gene expression and subsequent regulation of the enzyme activities. A better understanding of this interplay allows for identifying traits for stress tolerance breeding of crops. As a side effect, the result also may be used to identify cultivation methods modifying crop metabolism, thus resulting in special crop quality.
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