Metabolic profiling reveals metabolic shifts in Arabidopsis plants grown under different light conditions

• Plants have tremendous capacity to adjust their morphology, physiology and metabolism in response to changes in growing conditions. Thus, analysis solely of plants grown under constant conditions may give partial or misleading indications of their responses to the fluctuating natural conditions in which they evolved. To obtain data on growth-condition dependent differences in metabolite levels we compared leaf metabolite profiles of Arabidopsis thaliana growing under three constant laboratory light conditions: 30 (LL), 300 (NL) and 600 (HL) µmol photons m(-2) s(-1) . We also shifted plants to the field and followed their metabolite composition for three days. Numerous compounds showed light-intensity dependent accumulation, including: many sugars and sugar derivatives (fructose, sucrose, glucose, galactose and raffinose); tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle intermediates and amino acids (ca. 30% of which were more abundant under HL and 60% under LL). However, the patterns differed after shifting NL plants to field conditions. Levels of most identified metabolites (mainly amino acids, sugars and TCA cycle intermediates) rose after 2 h and peaked after 73 h, indicative of a "biphasic response" and "circadian" effects. The results provide new insight into metabolomic level mechanisms of plant acclimation, and highlight the role of known protectants under natural conditions.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Geovetenskap och miljövetenskap -- Miljövetenskap (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Earth and Related Environmental Sciences -- Environmental Sciences (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Medicinska och farmaceutiska grundvetenskaper -- Cell- och molekylärbiologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Basic Medicine -- Cell and Molecular Biology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

GC-MS

laboratory and field-grown plants

metabolome analysis

metabolomics

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)