Molecular physiology of salt acclimation: testing the use of model legumes

SANCHEZ DH, FLPIECKENSTAIN, ERBAN A, BROWKE M, HANNAH M, KRAEMER U; KOPKA J; UDVARDI MK

Puerto Vallarta, México

Conferencia; International Conference on Legume Genomics and Genetics; 2008

The use of model species is widely common in plant biology research as an approach to gain new insights of potential agronomical traits, and further transfer the knowledge to crop species. In this sense, productivity and environmental constraints are a major focus of study.  However, few formal demonstrations actually support the usefulness of such an approach when testing for molecular traits in response to salt stress. Here, we took advantage of the phylogenetically close legumes members of the Lotus spp. family to unravel how similar is the response to salt acclimation between model/inbreeders and cultivated/outbreeders species. To that end, we subjected seven genetic backgrounds to non-lethal long-term salinity and analyzed the salt-induced changes not only at the physiological but also at the ionomic, metabolomic and transcriptomic levels. The results revealed that some of the responses are common among all species, but also major components of the acclimation process are rather genotype-specific or shared between few genetical backgrounds. In the case of the metabolic phenotype, induced differences arose as a consequence of distinct physiological modes of response apparently linked to the physiology of ion homeostasis. This was not observed at the genome-wide level, where there existed no apparent relationship with general physiological parameters or survival potential, and few major functional differences between cultivars were revealed. The combined observations suggest that transfer of molecular knowledge from model to cultivated species is partially hampered by the specific response-signature of each genetic background