DELLAs proteins Contribute to set the elemental composition and the tolerance to low potassium supply in Arabidopsis thaliana

SONIA OLIFERUK; ADRIANA PEREZ; FRANCISCO RUBIO; GUILLERMO SANTA MARÍA

Foz do Iguaçu

Congreso; IPMB 2015 South America. 11th International Congress of Plant Molecular Biology; 2015

Recent research has shown that theGA-GID-DELLA module plays a major role in plant adaptation to several stresses.While, it has been recognized that DELLAs proteins contribute to set thecontrol of growth, development and more specifically the antioxidant response,it remains unknown their possible involvement in determining other relevantphysiological attributes, among them the elemental composition of plants. Here,we provide evidence that plants differing in DELLAs activity also display majordifferences in the shoot ionome as well as in the partitioning of macro andmicro elements between shoots and roots. Shoots of plants carrying the alteredfunction allele gai differ from aDELLAs quintuple mutant (5X) in theconcentration of seven out of twelve elements analyzed, namely: K, P, Ca , Zn,Cu, Mn and Sr, as well as of water. Exposure of plants to long-term potassiumdeprivation was companied by differences in N, K, P, S, Zn and Mn between gai and 5X plants. WT plants display, for most elements, an intermediatephenotype. Considering as a whole, the effect of K+-deprivation onthe significant changes suffered by the individual components of the ionomefollowed the order 5X>WT>gai. Differences in the tolerance to this stresscondition followed the order gai>WT>5X. On the other hand, altered and lossof function mutants display a worst efficiency of potassium utilization than WTplants. These results unveil a critical role of DELLAs in controlling theionome as well as the tolerance and potassium utilization efficiency of plantsexposed to low potassium supply.