Polyamines Contribution to the Improvement of Crop Plants Tolerance to Abiotic Stress
Plant development and productivity are negatively regulated by environmental stresses. The loss of productivity is triggered by a series of morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular stress-induced changes. The development of diverse strategi
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Polyamines Contribution to the Improvement of Crop Plants Tolerance to Abiotic Stress Ana Bernardina Menéndez, Andrés Alberto Rodriguez, Santiago Javier Maiale, Kessler Margarita Rodriguez, Bremont Juan Francisco Jimenez and Oscar Adolfo Ruiz
1 Introduction Polyamines (PAs) are aliphatic biogenic amines present in most Prokaryotes and all Eukaryotic organisms (Takahashi and Kakehi 2010; Fuell et al. 2010). These small molecules are essential for life. At physiological pH, PAs are found as protonated, positively charged molecules containing two (diamine), three (triamine) or four (tetraamine) amine groups, what favors their electrostatic interaction with several macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins and lipids (Igarashi and Kashiwagi 2000; Childs et al. 2003). The polycationic nature of PAs is one of the most important properties linking these natural compounds to several cellular and physiological processes, and new connections between PAs and other molecules, revealing new insights into the PA biological role are being continually discovered. At the cellular level, PAs participate in diverse fundamental processes such as transcription, translation, DNA replication, chromatin condensation, cell signaling, cell division and differentiation, senescence and cell death. In addition, diverse roles in membrane stabilization, ion channel regulation, cation-anion balance, modulation of enzyme activities, and protein modification have also been described (Childs et al. 2003; Shabala et al. 2007; Handa and Mattoo 2010). In plants, PAs are present from micromolar (∼10 μM) to millimolar concentrations (Galston and Sawhney 1990). The most common PAs are spermidine (Spd; NH2(CH2)3NH(CH2)4NH2), spermine (Spm; NH2(CH2)3NH(CH2)4NH(CH2)3NH2) and their obligate precursor putrescine (Put; NH2(CH2)4NH2). Spd is structurally an unsymmetrical molecule that can be aminopropylated at each end, forming either O. A. Ruiz () · A. B. Menéndez · A. A. Rodriguez · S. J. Maiale Instituto de Investigaciones Biotecnológicas, Instituto Tecnológico de Chascomús, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Av. Intendente Marino Km 8,200 CC 164, (B7130IWA) Chascomús, Prov. de Buenos Aires, Argentina e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] K. M. Rodriguez · B. J. Francisco Jimenez Instituto Potosino de Investigación, Científica y Tecnológica, San Luis Potosí, México N. Tuteja, S. S. Gill (eds.), Crop Improvement Under Adverse Conditions, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4633-0_5, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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Spm or thermospermine (tSpm) (Knott et al. 2007). In plants, PAs distribution differs among tissues and developmental stages, being Put and Spd more abundant than Spm and tSpm (Naka et al. 2010). Also, tSpm seems to be present in all plants, while Spm appears to be restricted to flowering plants (Fuell et al. 2010). Besides Put, Spd and Spm, less common PAs in plants have been described as cadaverine (Cad), norspermidine, norspermin
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