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ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS AND ADAPTATION TO STRESS

Singlet Oxygen Is the Major Reactive Oxygen Species Involved in Photooxidative Damage to Plants^1,[W]

Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, Direction des Sciences du Vivant, Institut de Biologie Environnementale et Biotechnologie, Laboratoire de Ecophysiologie Moléculaire des Plantes, and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche, Biologie Végétale et Microbiologie Environnementale, and Université d’Aix Marseille, F–13108 Saint Paul lez Durance, France (C.T., B.K., M.H.); Pharmaceutical Biology, Julius-von-Sachs-Institute for Biosciences, University of Wuerzburg, D–97082 Wuerzburg, Germany (M.K., G.G., M.J.M.); and Department of Plant Systems Biology, Flanders Institute for Biotechnology, and Department of Molecular Genetics, Ghent University, 9052 Ghent, Belgium (F.A.H., F.V.B.)

Reactive oxygen species act as signaling molecules but can also directly provoke cellular damage by rapidly oxidizing cellular components, including lipids. We developed a high-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry-based quantitative method that allowed us to discriminate between free radical (type I)- and singlet oxygen (¹O₂; type II)-mediated lipid peroxidation (LPO) signatures by using hydroxy fatty acids as specific reporters. Using this method, we observed that in nonphotosynthesizing Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) tissues, nonenzymatic LPO was almost exclusively catalyzed by free radicals both under normal and oxidative stress conditions. However, in leaf tissues under optimal growth conditions, ¹O₂ was responsible for more than 80% of the nonenzymatic LPO. In Arabidopsis mutants favoring ¹O₂ production, photooxidative stress led to a dramatic increase of ¹O₂ (type II) LPO that preceded cell death. Furthermore, under all conditions and in mutants that favor the production of superoxide and hydrogen peroxide (two sources for type I LPO reactions), plant cell death was nevertheless always preceded by an increase in ¹O₂-dependent (type II) LPO. Thus, besides triggering a genetic cell death program, as demonstrated previously with the Arabidopsis fluorescent mutant, ¹O₂ plays a major destructive role during the execution of reactive oxygen species-induced cell death in leaf tissues.

The author responsible for distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors (www.plantphysiol.org) is: Christian Triantaphylidès (ctriantaphylid{at}cea.fr).

^[W] The online version of this article contains Web-only data.

www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.108.125690

^* Corresponding author; e-mail ctriantaphylid{at}cea.fr.

Received July 4, 2008; accepted July 27, 2008; published August 1, 2008.