Aquaporins and the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum: are there new challenges

CÁCERES, PABLO DANIEL; MANACORDA, CARLOS A; SUTKA, MOIRA; VITALI, VICTORIA; ASURMENDI, SEBASTIÁN; BAROLI, IRENE; AMODEO, GABRIELA

Coquimbo

Congreso; XV REUNIÓN DE BIOLOGÍA VEGETAL; 2022

SOCIEDAD BIOLOGÍA VEGETAL DE CHILE

Aquaporins and the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum: are there new challenges?Pablo Caceres1,2, Carlos Manacorda3, Moira Sutka1,2, Victoria Vitali1,2, Sebastian Asurmendi3, Irene Baroli1,2, Gabriela Amodeo1,2*1Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, Universidad de Buenos Aires 2Instituto de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental, Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas y Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina3Instituto de Agrobiotecnología y Biología Molecular, Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria and Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Hurlingham, Argentina.*Email: amodeo@bg.fcen.uba.arDecades ago, the role of water potential gradients was established as critical in driving downhill water flows from the soil to the plant root-shoot system to reach a water-demanding atmosphere. Through this continuum, the major hydraulic resistances can be arranged in analogy to an electrical circuit. At the shoot level, stomatal conductance tightly regulates the water exchange. On the other hand, to understand how the root system is regulated we still need to integrate recent advances at the molecular level -particularly regarding aquaporins- to assess if changes in membrane water permeability on the cell-to-cell pathway have a major impact on root hydraulic conductivity. Aquaporins are highly regulated transmembrane proteins that share common structural features regardless of their multiple isoforms, high diversity in cell localization and transport selectivity. Some members of this protein family account for high water transport capacity. Our working hypothesis is that the root cell-to-cell pathway can be a strong modulator of the plant hydraulic dynamics. Our results show that plant root hydraulic adjustment is favored if the cell-to-cell pathway is highly regulated for water exchange. This is relevant not only for the plant hydraulic dynamics but also can be demonstrated that improves the short-term response to adverse plant environmental conditions.Acknowledgements: Supported by grants UBACyT1820 & ANPCyT PICT20-1438 to GA and PIP21-23 11220200101935CO to IB