Sugar Alcohols, Salt Stress, and Fungal Resistance: Polyols—Multifunctional Plant Protection?

By J. Williamson, D. Jennings, Wei-wen Guo, D. Pharr, M. Ehrenshaft. 2002

140 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The traditional use of polyols as osmotica in plant culture media is based on the assumption that polyols are not taken up or metabolized by cells. In reality, polyols are significant photosynthetic products and efficiently utilized metabolites in a large number of plants. In addition to these metabolic roles, initial interest in polyols focused primarily on their function as osmoprotectants. This was hypothesized to be due to their ability to act as compatible solutes. More recent research, however, indicates much broader roles for polyols in stress responses based on their significant antioxidant capacity. These include protection against salt and photooxidative stress as well as a potential role in plant pathogen interactions.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3cffe4ef3767c5c7e4bfe42d52ba1d18965c07d9

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Citations in the corpus

Polyamines as redox homeostasis regulators during salt stress in plants (2015, background): “Several polyols accumulating during salt stress (sorbitol, mannitol, myo-inositol, pinitol, and others) may be involved in scavenging hydroxyl radicals (Williamson et al., 2002).”
Synthesis of organic osmolytes and salt tolerance mechanisms in Paspalum vaginatum (2008, background): “Myo-inositol has been reported to function in some plants under salt stress as a compatible solute and in a cell signalling role (Hasegawa et al., 2000; Williamson et al., 2002); however, the minimal changes with salinity stress would suggest that neither role is important for seashore paspalum.”
Roles of osmoprotectants in improving salinity and drought tolerance in plants: a review (2015, background): “Williamson et al. (2002) have reported that sugar alcohols including mannitol, sorbitol and inositol enhance tolerance potential of plants against drought and salinity.”
Transgenic Plants for Abiotic Stress Resistance (2010, background): “In celery, mannitol metabolism is clearly altered by salt stress, with several lines of evidence indicating a connection between mannitol and salt tolerance, including increases in the capacity for mannitol biosynthesis and accumulation and decreases in catabolism (Williamson et al. 2002).”