OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE

This Article Free via Open Access: OA OA Full Text Full Text (PDF) PPT slides of all figures Supplemental Data OA All Versions of this Article: 151/4/1918    most recent pp.109.141911v1 Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Kosma, D. K. Articles by Jenks, M. A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Kosma, D. K. Articles by Jenks, M. A. Agricola Articles by Kosma, D. K. Articles by Jenks, M. A. Related Collections Plant Cell Walls

ENVIRONMENTAL STRESS AND ADAPTATION TO STRESS

The Impact of Water Deficiency on Leaf Cuticle Lipids of Arabidopsis^1,[W],[OA]

Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 (D.K.K., E.P.P., S.L., M.A.J.); and Laboratoire de Biogenèse Membranaire, Université Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Unité Mixte de Recherche 5200, 33076 Bordeaux cedex, France (B.B., A.B., J.J.)

Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants subjected to water deficit, sodium chloride (NaCl), or abscisic acid treatments were shown to exhibit a significant increase in the amount of leaf cuticular lipids. These stress treatments led to increases in cuticular wax amount per unit area of 32% to 80%, due primarily to 29% to 98% increases in wax alkanes. Of these treatments, only water deficit increased the total cutin monomer amount (by 65%), whereas both water deficit and NaCl altered the proportional amounts of cutin monomers. Abscisic acid had little effect on cutin composition. Water deficit, but not NaCl, increased leaf cuticle thickness (by 49%). Electron micrographs revealed that both water-deprived and NaCl-treated plants had elevated osmium accumulation in their cuticles. The abundance of cuticle-associated gene transcripts in leaves was altered by all treatments, including those performed in both pot-grown and in vitro conditions. Notably, the abundance of the ECERIFERUM1 gene transcript, predicted to function in alkane synthesis, was highly induced by all treatments, results consistent with the elevated alkane amounts observed in all treatments. Further, this induction of cuticle lipids was associated with reduced cuticle permeability and may be important for plant acclimation to subsequent water-limited conditions. Taken together, these results show that Arabidopsis provides an excellent model system to study the role of the cuticle in plant response to drought and related stresses, and its associated genetic and cellular regulation.

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: Matthew A. Jenks (jenksm{at}purdue.edu).

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

^[OA] Open Access articles can be viewed online without a subscription.

www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.109.141911

^* Corresponding author; e-mail jenksm{at}purdue.edu.

Received May 22, 2009; accepted October 6, 2009; published October 9, 2009.