A new molecule has been discovered in plants that promotes tolerance to environmental stress

A work recently published in Science Advances by the researchers Rafael Catalá and Julio Salinas, from the Margarita Salas Center for Biological Research (CIB-CSIC), shows that plants contain endogenous levels of TMAO, an osmolyte well known in animals for a long time, but not yet described in plants, which promotes tolerance to stress and might represent a new biotechnological tool to increase agricultural production under unfavorable environmental conditions.

This study demonstrates that plants, including the model species Arabidopsis thaliana and crops like tomato, barley, or corn, contain TMAO in their tissues. TMAO levels in plants increase when they are subjected to adverse environmental conditions, such as low temperatures, high concentrations of salt in the soil, or drought. The results of Catalá et al. reveal that this increase in TMAO leads to an increase in the tolerance of plants to these conditions and that a similar behavior is produced by exogenous treatments with TMAO.

These findings allow a better understanding on how plants adapt to situations of environmental stress and represents a new biotechnological tool to face the challenge of increasing agricultural production in a sustainable way under the unfavorable environmental conditions caused by climate change. The results of this work have led to the patent of a product already on the market based on this metabolite.

Several studies have proposed that diets rich in red meat and poor in vegetables produce an increase of TMAO in the blood which, in turn, would increase the risk of suffering from diseases such as arteriosclerosis or diabetes. The fact that plants accumulate TMAO introduces a new variable in these studies that must be taken into account to understand the real role of this molecule in human physiology.

Reference: Trimethylamine N-oxide is a new plant molecule that promotes abiotic stress tolerance. Rafael Catalá, Rosa López-Cobollo, M. Álvaro Berbís, Jesús Jiménez-Barbero, Julio Salinas (2021) Sci. Adv. 2021; 7: eabd9296. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd9296

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