Guibin Cui, Yanfeng Zhao, Jialing Zhang, Manning Chao, Kunliang Xie, Chao Zhang, Fengli Sun, Shudong Liu, Yajun Xi. Proteomic Analysis of the Similarities and Differences of Soil Drought and Polyethylene Glycol Stress Responses in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Proteomic Analysis of the Similarities and Differences of Soil Drought and Polyethylene Glycol Stress Responses in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Guibin Cui, Yanfeng Zhao, Jialing Zhang, Manning Chao, Kunliang Xie, Chao Zhang, Fengli Sun, Shudong Liu, Yajun Xi.

Plant Molecular Biology

DOI: 10.1007/s11103-019-00866-2.

Abstract: Polyethylene glycol (PEG) is widely used to simulate osmotic stress, but little is known about the different responses of wheat to PEG stress and soil drought. In this study, isobaric tags for relative quantification (iTRAQ)-based proteomic techniques were used to determine both the proteomic and physiological responses of wheat seedlings to soil drought and PEG. The results showed that photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, intercellular CO2 concentration, transpiration rate, maximum potential efficiency of PS II, leaf water content, relative electrolyte leakage, MDA content, and free proline content exhibited similar responses to soil drought and PEG. Approximately 15.8% of differential proteins were induced both by soil drought and PEG. Moreover, both soil drought and PEG inhibited carbon metabolism and the biosynthesis of some amino acids by altering the accumulation of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, ribulose-bisphosphate carboxylase, and phosphoglycerate kinase, but they both enhanced the metabolism of malate, proline, glutathione, and ascorbate by increasing the accumulation of key enzymes including malate dehydrogenase, monodehydroascorbate reductase, pyrroline-5-carboxylate dehydrogenase, pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthetase, ascorbate peroxidase, glutathione peroxidase, and glutathione S -transferase. Notably, the latter five of these enzymes were found to be more sensitive to soil drought. In addition, polyamine biosynthesis was specifically induced by increased gene expression and protein accumulation of polyamine oxidase and spermidine synthase under PEG stress, whereas fructose-bisphosphate aldolase and arginase were induced by soil drought. Therefore, present results suggest that PEG is an effective method to simulate drought stress, but the key proteins related to the metabolism of malate, glutathione, ascorbate, proline, and polyamine need to be confirmed under soil drought.