Plant shade response: have the aquaporins some role in this response?

MILENA MANZUR; MOIRA SUTKA; GABRIELA AMODEO; ROMINA SELLARO

Foz de Iguazú

Congreso; 11th International Congress of Plant Molecular Biology; 2015

International Society for Plant Molecular Biology

The shade avoidance syndrome (SAS) is one of the best-studied forms of plant phenotypic plasticity. This syndrome involved an extra growth of some parts of plant body (e.g. hypocotyls, leaf petiole). Thus, extra photosynthesis products, nutrients and water availability are necessary for this response. In particular, water channel activity is crucial to satisfy water demand for such extra growth. It is well know that PIP2 proteins function as water channels and their activity is affected by several stress conditions. The aim of this work was evaluate shade (i.e. low R/FR ratio) effect on hypocotyls elongation of aquaporins mutants. For this we used six mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana: pip2;1-1, pip2;1-2, pip2;2-3, pip2;2-4, pip2;6-1, pip2;6-2. We also evaluated gene expression of such aquaporins in microarrays of shade treatment. We found that under shade conditions some aquaporins were over expressed for wild type genotype. For mutants genotypes we found that pip2;2-3, pip2;2-4, pip2;6-1, pip2;6-2 showed lower change in hypocotyls length respect to wild type and pip2;1-1, pip2;1-2 mutants. Our results suggest that could have a significant role of aquaporins in plant growth regulation, when plants are submitted to shade conditions.