1
|
Balasubramanian VK, Veličković D, Rubio Wilhelmi MDM, Anderton CR, Stewart CN, DiFazio S, Blumwald E, Ahkami AH. Spatiotemporal metabolic responses to water deficit stress in distinct leaf cell-types of poplar. Front Plant Sci 2024; 15:1346853. [PMID: 38495374 PMCID: PMC10940329 DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1346853] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/30/2023] [Accepted: 02/12/2024] [Indexed: 03/19/2024]
Abstract
The impact of water-deficit (WD) stress on plant metabolism has been predominantly studied at the whole tissue level. However, plant tissues are made of several distinct cell types with unique and differentiated functions, which limits whole tissue 'omics'-based studies to determine only an averaged molecular signature arising from multiple cell types. Advancements in spatial omics technologies provide an opportunity to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying plant responses to WD stress at distinct cell-type levels. Here, we studied the spatiotemporal metabolic responses of two poplar (Populus tremula× P. alba) leaf cell types -palisade and vascular cells- to WD stress using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-mass spectrometry imaging (MALDI-MSI). We identified unique WD stress-mediated metabolic shifts in each leaf cell type when exposed to early and prolonged WD stresses and recovery from stress. During water-limited conditions, flavonoids and phenolic metabolites were exclusively accumulated in leaf palisade cells. However, vascular cells mainly accumulated sugars and fatty acids during stress and recovery conditions, respectively, highlighting the functional divergence of leaf cell types in response to WD stress. By comparing our MALDI-MSI metabolic data with whole leaf tissue gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolic profile, we identified only a few metabolites including monosaccharides, hexose phosphates, and palmitic acid that showed a similar accumulation trend at both cell-type and whole leaf tissue levels. Overall, this work highlights the potential of the MSI approach to complement the whole tissue-based metabolomics techniques and provides a novel spatiotemporal understanding of plant metabolic responses to WD stress. This will help engineer specific metabolic pathways at a cellular level in strategic perennial trees like poplars to help withstand future aberrations in environmental conditions and to increase bioenergy sustainability.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Vimal Kumar Balasubramanian
- Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA, United States
| | - Dušan Veličković
- Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA, United States
| | | | - Christopher R. Anderton
- Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA, United States
| | - C. Neal Stewart
- Department of Plant Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States
- Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States
| | - Stephen DiFazio
- Department of Biology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, United States
| | - Eduardo Blumwald
- Department of Plant Sciences, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, United States
| | - Amir H. Ahkami
- Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA, United States
- Adjoint Faculty, School of Biological Science (SBS), Washington State University (WSU), Pullman, WA, United States
| |
Collapse
|