Metabolic recovery of Arabidopsis thaliana roots following cessation of oxidative stress

To cope with the various environmental stresses resulting in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production plant metabolism is known to be altered specifically under different stresses. After overcoming the stress the metabolism should be reconfigured to recover basal operation however knowledge concerning how this is achieved is cursory. To investigate the metabolic recovery of roots following oxidative stress, changes in metabolite abundance and carbon flow were analysed. Arabidopsis roots were treated by menadione to elicit oxidative stress. Roots were fed with 13C labelled glucose and the redistribution of isotope was determined in order to study carbon flow. The label redistribution through many pathways such as glycolysis, the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and amino acid metabolism were reduced under oxidative stress. After menadione removal many of the stress-related changes reverted back to basal levels. Decreases in amounts of hexose phosphates, malate, 2-oxoglutarate, glutamate and aspartate were fully recovered or even increased to above the control level. However, some metabolites such as pentose phosphates and citrate did not recover but maintained their levels or even increased further. The alteration in label redistribution largely correlated with that in metabolite abundance. Glycolytic carbon flow reverted to the control level only 18 h after menadione removal although the TCA cycle and some amino acids such as aspartate and glutamate took longer to recover. Taken together, plant root metabolism was demonstrated to be able to overcome menadione-induced oxidative stress with the differential time period required by independent pathways suggestive of the involvement of pathway specific regulatory processes

The MHC class I MICA gene is a histocompatibility antigen in kidney transplantation

International audienceK idney transplantation is the only curative treatment for end-stage renal disease 1. The fact that the first successful kidney transplantation in man was between identical twins 2 , along with seminal work in animal models, hinted strongly that a single genetic locus does not govern the clinical outcome of a transplantation, no matter how relevant (such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), human leukocyte antigen (HLA)). Indeed, George Snell, in his landmark 1948 study 3 (as well as subsequent work by himself, and others), identified several dozen histocompatibility loci in the mouse 4 , although close to none has been identified to date in any species (including man). Fast forward to today, and, owing to the development and refinement of country-and continent-wide allocation processes, perioperative handling of the graft and patients, and selective immunosuppressive drugs that improve transplantation survival mainly by alleviating acute T cell-mediated rejection (TCMR), the number of kidney transplantations is continuously increasing worldwide. However, antibody-mediated rejection (ABMR) is recognized as a major cause of late transplantation failure, and its treatment remains challenging 5. In addition to the histological findings, a key feature of ABMR is the presence of donor-specific anti-HLA antibodies (DSA) 6. Nonetheless, in routine clinical care, cases meeting the histological criteria for ABMR but without detectable anti-HLA DSA could represent more than 50% of rejection events 7. These cases might be explained by the presence of pathogenic antibodies that are produced against other, non-HLA, histocompatibility antigens 8. MHC class I chain-related gene A (MICA; GenBank accession: NM_001177519), discovered almost 30 years ago 9 , encodes a polymorphic non-conventional MHC-encoded class I molecule 10. The MICA gene is located, within the HLA complex, 46 kb centromeric to the HLA-B locus 9. Close to 400 MICA alleles have been reported to date 10. The MICA glycoprotein (Uniprot accession: Q96QC4) is expressed on a restricted number of cell types, mainly epithelial and endothelial cells. MICA binds NKG2D, an activating receptor present on the surface of cytotoxic CD8 + αβ and γδ T lymphocytes as well as certain natural killer (NK) cells 10. Fifteen years ago Zou et al. 11 reported the first comprehensive study of the potential involvement of MICA in kidney transplant outcomes. That work, however, was focused only on anti-MICA antibodies and had no information on donor and recipient MICA (mis)matching, a situation that has persisted to date given that no study has analyzed simultaneously the sequence-based molecular MICA matching and the status of both anti-HLA and anti-MICA DSA in a large cohort for which information about all other relevant covariates was available and included in the final analysis (for review see refs. 12,13)

Metal homeostasis in plant mitochondria

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