Herbicide-related signaling in plants reveals novel insights for herbicide use strategies, environmental risk assessment and global change assessment challenges.
Herbicide impact is usually assessed as the result of a unilinear mode of action on a specific biochemical target with a typical dose-response dynamics. Recent developments in plant molecular signaling and crosstalk between nutritional, hormonal and environmental stress cues are however revealing a more complex picture of inclusive toxicity. Herbicides induce large-scale metabolic and gene-expression effects that go far beyond the expected consequences of unilinear herbicide-target-damage mechanisms. Moreover, groundbreaking studies have revealed that herbicide action and responses strongly interact with hormone signaling pathways, with numerous regulatory protein-kinases and -phosphatases, with metabolic and circadian clock regulators and with oxidative stress signaling pathways. These interactions are likely to result in mechanisms of adjustment that can determine the level of sensitivity or tolerance to a given herbicide or to a mixture of herbicides depending on the environmental and developmental status of the plant. Such regulations can be described as rheostatic and their importance is discussed in relation with herbicide use strategies, environmental risk assessment and global change assessment challenges.
UMR 6553 Ecosystems-Biodiversity-Evolution, Université de Rennes 1/CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, Bâtiment 14A, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France.
Diana
D
Alberto
UMR 6553 Ecosystems-Biodiversity-Evolution, Université de Rennes 1/CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, Bâtiment 14A, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France.
Anne-Antonella
AA
Serra
UMR 6553 Ecosystems-Biodiversity-Evolution, Université de Rennes 1/CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, Bâtiment 14A, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France.
Cécile
C
Sulmon
UMR 6553 Ecosystems-Biodiversity-Evolution, Université de Rennes 1/CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, Bâtiment 14A, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France.
Gwenola
G
Gouesbet
UMR 6553 Ecosystems-Biodiversity-Evolution, Université de Rennes 1/CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, Bâtiment 14A, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France. Electronic address: Ivan.Couee@univ-rennes1.fr.
Ivan
I
Couée
D006540:Herbicides / Q000494:pharmacology*; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena / Q000187:drug effects*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D015398:Signal Transduction; D013312:Stress, Physiological
D006540:Herbicides
Abiotic stress; Global change; Herbicide pollution; Herbicide resistance; Organic pollutants; Xenobiotics