The Molecular & Cellular Biology Seminar features Matrika Bhattarai discussing "Metal Stress on Growth of Plant" on Feb. 8 from 4:35 to 5:55 p.m. in Porter Hall 104 and via Teams.

Bhattarai is a doctoral student in Environmental & Plant Biology and Molecular & Cellular Biology.

Join the meeting via Teams.

Abstract: Metals are essential for biological processes and developmental of plant and animal. Some of the metals like Zn, Cu, Mo, Mn, Co, and Ni are essential micronutrients which are responsible for regular processes in plant. But there are some toxic metals like arsenic (As), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), chromium (Cr) and aluminum (Al) which can have adverse effect on plant and animals (Pierart et al., 2015). Exposure of plant to toxic metallic environment will have adverse effect in their growth and development and causes severe human health hazards because of their accumulation in crop plants. These toxic elements cause the reduction of plants yield because of the morphological abnormalities, and metabolic disorders of plant. These abnormalities give rise to the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), e.g., superoxide anion radical (O ₂ ^- ), H ₂ O ₂ , and hydroxyl radical (OH ^- ), resulting in disruption of the redox homeostasis of cells (Shahid et al., 2015).   Plants have evolved numerous defense mechanisms to withstand heavy metal toxicity, viz reduced heavy metal uptake, phyto-chelation of metals, sequestration of metal into vacuoles, and activation of enzymatic and nonenzymatic antioxidant system.  Also, plant have symbiosis with different bacteria and fungus which can help in reducing the toxic metal by several direct and indirect mechanisms such as biofilm formation, siderophores, exopolysaccharide, and phytohormones production (Tiwari et al., 2017). 

References:

Pierart, A., Shahid, M., Séjalon-Delmas, N., and Dumat, C. (2015). Antimony bioavailability: Knowledge and research perspectives for sustainable agricultures. J. Hazard. Mater. 289, 219–234. doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2015.02.011.

Shahid, M., Khalid, S., Abbas, G., Shahid, N., Nadeem, M., Sabir, M., et al. (2015). Heavy Metal Stress and Crop Productivity. Crop Prod. Glob. Environ. Issues , 1–25. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-23162-4_1.

Tiwari, S., Prasad, V., Chauhan, P. S., and Lata, C. (2017). Bacillus amyloliquefaciens confers tolerance to various abiotic stresses and modulates plant response to phytohormones through osmoprotection and gene expression regulation in rice. Front. Plant Sci. 8, 1510. doi:10.3389/FPLS.2017.01510/BIBTEX.