Heat stress tolerance and cell death in plants?Role of ferroptosis-like cell death

DISTEFANO, AYELEN; ROLDAN, JUNA; FIOL, DIEGO F.; ZABALETA, EDUARDO J.; PAGNUSSAT, GABRIELA C.

Conferencia; Iron, Reactive Oxygen Species & Ferroptosis in Life, Death & Disease; 2018

Abiotic stresses cause changes at physiological, biochemical, and molecular levels that adversely affect plant growth and productivity. These aspects are critical in commercial crops, as they ultimately affect growth, yields and even survival. In particular, heat stress induces severe cellular damage that often leads to plant death. Recently, we found that in response to heat stress, plant cells undergo an oxidative iron-dependent type of cell death that showed morphological, biochemical and molecular similarities with ferroptosis, an iron dependent type of cell death first discovered in tumor cells. After treatment with canonical ferroptosis inhibitors such as the iron-chelating agent ciclopirox olamine (CPX) or the lipophilic antioxidant ferrostatin-1 (Fer-1), plants are able to survive otherwise lethal temperatures and do not show the typical oxidative burst that precede cell death. These results suggested that heat stress triggers ferroptosis-like cell death in plants and showed that suppressing this death might be of value for potential applications in agriculture. However, the molecular response to ferroptosis inhibitors, essential to pinpoint possible biotechnological approaches, is currently unknown. To get a comprehensive impression of A. thaliana transcriptome in response to ferroptosis inhibitors, RNAseq libraries were constructed from roots of seedlings treated for 18 h with Fer-1, CPX or with the vehicle, DMSO and sequenced using Illumina paired-end sequencing technology. The analysis of these libraries allowed us to study why inhibiting ferroptosis might protect plants from heat stress.