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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Red light-induced inhibition of maize (Zea mays) mesocotyl elongation: evaluation of apoplastic metabolites

Elena Sharova https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2746-1993 A # * , Tatiana Bilova https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6024-3667 A B # , Elena Tsvetkova https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2022-615X C , Galina Smolikova https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5238-1851 A , Andrej Frolov https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3250-5858 B and Sergei Medvedev https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1127-1343 A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.

B K.A. Timiryazev Institute of Plant Physiology RAS, Moscow, Russian Federation.

C Department of Biochemistry, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation.

* Correspondence to: e.sharova@spbu.ru
# These authors contributed equally to this paper

Handling Editor: Vadim Demidchik

Functional Plant Biology 50(7) 532-539 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP22181
Submitted: 13 August 2022  Accepted: 9 December 2022   Published: 1 June 2023

© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

Light is a crucial factor affecting plant growth and development. Besides providing the energy for photosynthesis, light serves as a sensory cue to control the adaptation of plants to environmental changes. We used the etiolated maize (Zea mays) seedlings as a model system to study the red light-regulated growth. Exposure of the maize seedlings to red light resulted in growth inhibition of mesocotyls. We demonstrate for the first time (to the best our knowledge) that red light affected the patterns of apoplastic fluid (AF) metabolites extracted from the mesocotyl segments. By means of the untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based metabolomics approach, we identified 44 metabolites in the AF of maize mesocotyls and characterised the dynamics of their relative tissue abundances. The characteristic metabolite patterns of mesocotyls dominated with mono- and disaccharides, organic acids, amino acids, and other nitrogen-containing compounds. Upon red light irradiation, the contents of β-alanine, putrescine and trans-aconitate significantly increased (P-value < 0.05). In contrast, there was a significant decrease in the total ascorbate content in the AF of maize mesocotyls. The regulatory role of apoplastic metabolites in the red light-induced inhibition of maize mesocotyl elongation is discussed.

Keywords: apoplast, ascorbate, gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), maize, mesocotyl, metabolomics, plant growth, red light.


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