With the frequent occurrence of extreme weather due to global climate change, flood disasters pose a serious threat to agricultural production, causing huge economic losses annually. When large areas of farmland are submerged, the growth environment of crops is severely damaged. Factors such as blocked gas exchange, reduced photosynthetic efficiency, damaged roots, and increased diseases lead to a significant decrease in yield or even complete crop failure. Therefore, it is extremely urgent to elucidate the molecular mechanism of plant response to waterlogging stress and cultivate new crop varieties with strong submergence tolerance. Autophagy plays a crucial role in plants’ response to waterlogging stress by degrading and renewing damaged cell components to maintain the stability of the intracellular environment. However, our current understanding of the deep mechanism of how autophagy regulates plant waterlogging tolerance is still insufficient.
Recently, relevant scholars published a research paper titled “Autophagy regulates plant tolerance to submergence by modulating photosynthesis” in Plant, Cell & Environment, revealing the molecular mechanism that autophagy enhances waterlogging tolerance by maintaining plant underwater photosynthesis and alleviating excessive energy consumption.
This study adopted a multi-omics approach, combining transcriptome, proteome, and lipidome to analyze the molecular changes of Arabidopsis wild-type and autophagy-deficient mutants (atg5-1) under waterlogging stress. Lipid analysis found that the chloroplast lipid levels in the atg5-1 mutant, including monogalactosyldiacylglycerol (MGDG), digalactosyldiacylglycerol (DGDG), and phosphatidylglycerol (PG), were lower than those of the wild-type under waterlogging conditions. These results indicate that autophagy regulates lipid metabolism under waterlogging conditions, and the lack of autophagy leads to a decrease in chloroplast lipid content, suggesting that photosynthesis is affected in the atg5-1 mutant.
Proteome analysis found that the photosynthesis-related proteins in the atg5-1 mutant were significantly reduced under waterlogging conditions. In addition, the photosynthetic efficiency of the atg5-1 mutant was significantly decreased under waterlogging conditions. Phenotypic analysis showed that the inhibition of photosynthesis reduced the plant’s tolerance to waterlogging stress. Compared with wild-type plants, the starch content of the atg5-1 mutant was significantly reduced after waterlogging. The research results revealed the new role of autophagy in plants’ response to waterlogging stress by regulating underwater photosynthesis and starch content, providing a new theoretical basis for crop production and the breeding of submergence-tolerant varieties.
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