IRONMAN Tunes Responses to Iron Deficiency in Concert with Environmental Ph
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bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.16.431461; this version posted February 17, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Short title: IRONMAN Tunes Iron Deficiency Responses 2 3 Corresponding author details: 4 Wolfgang Schmidt 5 Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, 11529 Taipei, Taiwan 6 E-mail, [email protected] 7 8 9 IRONMAN Tunes Responses to Iron Deficiency in Concert with Environmental pH 10 11 Chandan Kumar Gautama,b,c, Huei-Hsuan Tsaic and Wolfgang Schmidta,c,d,e,1 12 13 aMolecular and Biological Agricultural Sciences Program, Taiwan International Graduate 14 Program, Academia Sinica and National Chung-Hsing University, Taipei 11529, Taiwan 15 bGraduate Institute of Biotechnology, National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung 40227, 16 Taiwan 17 cInstitute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan 18 dBiotechnology Center, National Chung-Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan 19 eGenome and Systems Biology Degree Program, College of Life Science, National Taiwan 20 University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan 21 22 23 One sentence summary: Ectopic expression of IRONMAN peptides improves growth under 24 iron-limiting conditions by inducing responses to limited iron availability in accordance with the 25 environmental pH. 26 27 The author responsible for distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this 28 article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors 29 (www.plantphysiol.org) is: Wolfgang Schmidt ([email protected]). 30 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.16.431461; this version posted February 17, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 31 AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS 32 C.K.G., H.H.T, and W.S. designed the research; C.K.G. and H.H.T performed and analyzed 33 experiments; W.S. and C.K.G. wrote the manuscript. 34 35 This work was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology to W.S. 36 (grant No.: 108-2311-B-001 -033 -MY3). 37 1Address correspondence to [email protected] 38 2 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.16.431461; this version posted February 17, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 39 ABSTRACT 40 Iron (Fe) is an essential mineral element which governs the composition of natural plant 41 communities and limits crop yield in agricultural ecosystems due to its extremely low 42 availability in most soils, particularly at alkaline pH. To extract sufficient Fe from the soil under 43 such conditions, some plants including Arabidopsis thaliana secrete Fe-mobilizing 44 phenylpropanoids, which mobilize sparingly soluble Fe hydroxides by reduction and chelation. 45 We show here that ectopic expression of the IRONMAN peptides IMA1 and IMA2 improves 46 growth on calcareous soil by inducing the biosynthesis and secretion of the catecholic coumarin 47 fraxetin (7,8-dihydroxy-6-methoxycoumarin) through increased expression of MYB72 and 48 SCOPOLETIN 8-HYDROXYLASE (S8H), a response which is strictly dependent on elevated 49 environmental pH (pHe). By contrast, transcription of the cytochrome P450 family protein 50 CYP82C4, catalyzing the subsequent hydroxylation of fraxetin to sideretin, which forms less 51 stable complexes with iron, was strongly repressed under such conditions. Luciferase reporter 52 assays in transiently transformed protoplasts showed that IMA1/IMA2 peptides are translated 53 and modulate the expression of CYP82C4 and MYB72 by acting as transcriptional coactivators. It 54 is concluded that IMA peptides regulate processes supporting Fe uptake at both acidic and 55 elevated pH by controlling gene expression upstream of or in concert with a putative pHe signal 56 to adapt the plant to the prevailing edaphic conditions. This regulatory pattern confers tolerance 57 to calcareous soils by extending the pH range in which Fe can be efficiently absorbed from the 58 soil. Altering the expression of IMA peptides provides a novel route for generating plants 59 adapted to calcareous soils. 60 3 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.16.431461; this version posted February 17, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 61 INTRODUCTION 62 In natural ecosystems, growth on calcareous, i.e. carbonate-rich, alkaline soils, is restricted to so- 63 called calcicole (chalk-loving) plants, while calcifuge (chalk-fleeing) species are excluded from 64 such habitats (Lee, 1998; Grime and Hodgson, 1969). Among other factors, the ability to thrive 65 on calcareous substrates has been attributed to a particularly efficient strategy to extract iron (Fe) 66 from the soil, an essential mineral nutrient with extremely limited solubility in most conditions. 67 In aerated soils, alkalinity decreases the availability of Fe to levels that are several orders of 68 magnitude below the requirement of the plants (Lindsay and Schwab, 1983; Tyler, 1996). 69 Species that are not well adapted to calcareous soils, as for example crops such as fruit trees and 70 soybean or taxa which originate from acidic habitats, develop lime-induced chlorosis caused by 71 insufficient uptake, maldistribution, or immobilization of Fe (Zohlen and Tyler, 2003). 72 The underlying causes for the superior Fe acquisition efficiency of calcicole species still 73 remain largely enigmatic. Generally, gramineous species (Poaceae) have been regarded as being 74 more Fe-efficient under alkaline condition than non-grasses, a distinction that has been 75 associated with the mechanism by which Fe is mobilized by grass roots. In contrast to all other 76 land plants, grasses have adopted a chelation-based Fe uptake system that relies on the synthesis 77 and secretion of Fe-chelating phytosiderophores, a mechanism that has been designated as 78 strategy II (Römheld and Marschner, 1986). Phytosiderophores are mugineic acid derivates that 79 form soluble complexes with ferric Fe, which are fairly stable over a wide pH range (Shi et al., 80 1988). Conversely, non-grasses have adopted an Fe acquisition strategy which depends on the 81 orchestrated action of enzymatic reduction of ferric chelates, H+-ATPase-mediated acidification 82 of the rhizosphere, and secretion of low-molecular-weight Fe-mobilizing compounds such as 83 flavins or phenylpropanoids, a system that is referred to as strategy I (Römheld and Marschner, 84 1986). In Arabidopsis, chelated ferric Fe is reduced by the plasma membrane-bound FERRIC 85 REDUCTION OXIDASE2 (FRO2; Robinson et al., 1999) and the liberated Fe2+ is subsequently 86 taken up from the soil solution by IRON-REGULATED TRANSPORTER1 (IRT1; Eide et al; 87 1996; Vert et al., 2002). The FRO2-mediated reduction of ferric Fe is supported by proton 88 extrusion via the P-type H+-ATPase AHA2 (Santi and Schmidt, 2009), a process that creates a 89 slightly acidic pH milieu in the apoplast that is favorable for the uptake of Fe. FRO2-mediated 90 ferric reduction is compromised at circumneutral or alkaline pH ranges (Susín et al., 1996; 4 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.16.431461; this version posted February 17, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-ND 4.0 International license. 91 Lucena et al., 2007; Waters et al., 2018), rendering the strategy I system ineffective under such 92 conditions. 93 In Arabidopsis, the genes mediating the Fe deficiency responses are under the control of 94 a heterodimer consisting of the master transcription factor FER-LIKE IRON DEFICIENCY 95 INDUCED TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR (FIT; bHLH29) and one out of four clade Ib bHLH 96 proteins (bHLH38, bHLH39, bHLH100, and bHLH101) (Colangelo and Guerinot, 2004; Yuan et 97 al., 2008; Sivitz et al., 2012; Wang et al., 2013). The expression of FIT, in turn, and that of all Ib 98 bHLH proteins, is controlled by UPSTREAM REGULATOR OF IRT1 (URI/bHLH121) in 99 concert with IAA-LEUCINE RESISTANT3 (ILR3/bHLH105) (Kim et al., 2019; Gao et al., 100 2020a; Lei et al., 2020). FIT is negatively regulated by the clade IVa bHLH transcription factors 101 bHLH18, bHLH19, bHLH20, and bHLH25 (Cui et al., 2018), and by the E3 ligases BTSL1 and 102 BTSL2 (Rodríguez-Celma et al., 2019), which target FIT to degradation via the 26S proteasome. 103 A novel family of peptides designated IRONMAN/FE-UPTAKE-INDUCING PEPTIDE 104 (IMA/FEP), control Fe uptake presumably via regulation of clade Ib bHLH proteins (Grillet et 105 al., 2018; Hirayama et al., 2018). IMA/FEP peptides are ubiquitous across land plants and share 106 a highly conserved consensus motif at the C-terminus, which is necessary and sufficient for IMA 107 function. The expression of IMA1 and IMA2 is directly controlled by bHLH121 (Gao et al., 108 2020a). Ectopic expression of IMA1 overrides the repression of Fe uptake by sufficient internal 109 Fe levels, induces ferric reduction activity, and improves growth on media with low Fe solubility 110 (Grillet et al., 2018).