title: Early responses of mature Arabidopsis thaliana plants to reduced water potential in the agar-based polyethylene glycol infusion drought model.
abstract: Drought is one of the most important environmental stressors resulting in increasing losses of crop plant productivity all over the world. Therefore, development of new approaches to increase the stress tolerance of crop plants is strongly desired. This requires precise and adequate modeling of drought stress. As this type of stress manifests itself as a steady decrease in the substrate water potential (ψw), agar plates infused with polyethylene glycol (PEG) are the perfect experimental tool: they are easy in preparation and provide a constantly reduced ψw, which is not possible in soil models. However, currently, this model is applicable only to seedlings and cannot be used for evaluation of stress responses in mature plants, which are obviously the most appropriate objects for drought tolerance research. To overcome this limitation, here we introduce a PEG-based agar infusion model suitable for 6-8-week-old A. thaliana plants, and characterize, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, the early drought stress responses of adult plants grown on PEG-infused agar. We describe essential alterations in the primary metabolome (sugars and related compounds, amino acids and polyamines) accompanied by qualitative and quantitative changes in protein patterns: up to 87 unique stress-related proteins were annotated under drought stress conditions, whereas further 84 proteins showed a change in abundance. The obtained proteome patterns differed slightly from those reported for seedlings and soil-based models.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany; Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, Universität Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: afrolov@ipb-halle.de.
authors.forename: Andrej
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Frolov
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany; Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, Universität Leipzig, Germany; Department of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, St. Petersburg State University, Russia.
authors.forename: Tatiana
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bilova
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany; Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, Universität Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Gagan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Paudel
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany.
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Berger
authors.affiliation: Department of Metabolic and Cell Biology, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany.
authors.forename: Gerd U
authors.initials: GU
authors.lastname: Balcke
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, Universität Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Birkemeyer
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioorganic Chemistry, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, Germany.
authors.forename: Ludger A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Wessjohann
mesh_terms: D000362:Agar; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D055442:Metabolome; D055432:Metabolomics; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; D020543:Proteome; D040901:Proteomics; D036226:Seedlings / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology; D013312:Stress, Physiological; D014867:Water / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D020543:Proteome; D014867:Water; D011092:Polyethylene Glycols; D000362:Agar
keywords: Agar infusion model; Arabidopsis thaliana; Early drought response; Experimental drought stress; Metabolomics; Proteomics