Regulation of Xenobiotics in Higher Plants: Signalling and Detoxification
Increased anthropogenic activities have aggravated the different chemical pollutants (xenobiotics) in the environment. Xenobiotics are any chemical or other substance that cannot be utilized by plants for their growth and development. Xenobiotics alone an
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Regulation of Xenobiotics in Higher Plants: Signalling and Detoxification Shikha Singh, Gausiya Bashri, Anita Singh, and Sheo Mohan Prasad
Abstract
Increased anthropogenic activities have aggravated the different chemical pollutants (xenobiotics) in the environment. Xenobiotics are any chemical or other substance that cannot be utilized by plants for their growth and development. Xenobiotics alone and/or in combination can affect the growth and physiology of every organism, which varies species to species. It may also affect the coordinated signalling pathways that alter the gene expression and regulation in higher plants. Therefore, plants have developed the mechanism for the mobilizations of xenobiotics which include three phases, i.e. transformation, conjugation and compartmentation. Further, plants have also evolved various detoxification processes for these xenobiotics. Therefore, in this chapter the different fates of xenobiotics in plant system as well as their signalling and detoxification processes are discussed in detail. Keywords
Detoxification • Fates • Signalling • Xenobiotics
3.1
Introduction
Xenobiotics (from the Greek word for foreign chemicals) can be defined as any chemical or other substance that cannot be utilized by plants for energy yielding processes and it is not normally found in the ecosystems. Plants, like other organisms in the environment, are continually exposed to natural and synthetic S. Singh • G. Bashri • A. Singh • S.M. Prasad (*) Ranjan Plant Physiology and Biochemistry Laboratory, Department of Botany, University of Allahabad, Allahabad 211002, Uttar Pradesh, India e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2016 A. Singh et al. (eds.), Plant Responses to Xenobiotics, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2860-1_3
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xenobiotics such as heavy metals/metalloids (i.e. lead, cadmium, arsenic, etc.), allelochemicals (cinnamic acid, benzoic acid, etc.), organic pollutants (trinitrotoluene, phenanthrene, etc.), pesticides (atrazine, chlorpyriphos, cypermethrin, endosulfan, etc.) and air pollutants (Zhang et al. 2007; Riechers et al. 2010). These xenobiotics may originate from both natural (fires, volcano eruptions, soil or rock erosion, biodegradation) and anthropogenic (air and soil pollution, herbicides) sources. They may also be characterized according to their environmental targets (air, soil and water) and biological targets (e.g. plants, fungi, mammals and invertebrates). Phytochemical crop protection leads to the release of xenobiotic molecules into the environment by volatilization, spray drift, runoff, leaching and absorption. Such xenobiotics cannot be used for nutrition or as a source of energy, but are nevertheless taken up and accumulate. Exposure of organisms to xenobiotic materials is considered significantly in order to understand the environmental and toxicological chemistry. Combinations of chemical pollution have complex biological effects that are difficult to predict from the effects of single contaminants (Devier et al. 20
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