Glutathione Is a Key Player in Metal-Induced Oxidative Stress Defenses

By M. Jozefczak, Tony Remans, Jaco Vangronsveld, A. Cuypers. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 2012

774 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Since the industrial revolution, the production, and consequently the emission of metals, has increased exponentially, overwhelming the natural cycles of metals in many ecosystems. Metals display a diverse array of physico-chemical properties such as essential versus non-essential and redox-active versus non-redox-active. In general, all metals can lead to toxicity and oxidative stress when taken up in excessive amounts, imposing a serious threat to the environment and human health. In order to cope with different kinds of metals, plants possess defense strategies in which glutathione (GSH; γ-glu-cys-gly) plays a central role as chelating agent, antioxidant and signaling component. Therefore, this review highlights the role of GSH in: (1) metal homeostasis; (2) antioxidative defense; and (3) signal transduction under metal stress. The diverse functions of GSH originate from the sulfhydryl group in cysteine, enabling GSH to chelate metals and participate in redox cycling.

Subfields: Biochemistry, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Nutrition and Dietetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c29bb4d84440a2eee2a2dc32b762fe28b7e9e4b

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In Biochemistry

1. Hanan Ahmed Hashem
2. S. Baldelli
3. K. Gould
4. M. Tattini
5. K. Aquilano
6. M. Ciriolo

In Nutrition and Dietetics

1. S. Baldelli
2. K. Gould
3. K. Aquilano
4. M. Ciriolo

Citations in the corpus

• Glutathione: new roles in redox signaling for an old antioxidant (2014, background): “GSH is the most important hydrophilic antioxidant that protects cells against exogenous and endogenous toxins, including reactive oxygen (ROS) and nitrogen (RNS) species (Rauhala et al., 2005; Jozefczak et al., 2012).”
• Heavy Metal Stress and Some Mechanisms of Plant Defense Response (2015, background): “Bioactive-metals, based on their physicochemical properties, are divided into two groups of redox-active metals such as Cr, Cu, Mn, and Fe and non-redox active metals such as Cd, Ni, Hg, Zn, and Al [25, 26].”
• Remediation of Heavy Metals by Biomolecules: A Review (2015, background): “These peptides are responsible for plant tolerance toward heavy metals, and they are induced upon exposure of plants to heavy metals such as As, Cd, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn (Jozefczak et al., 2012; Sevcikova et al., 2011; Yadav, 2010).”
• Multiple functional roles of anthocyanins in plant-environment interactions. (2015, background): “The system requires cross-talk between the responses of the GSH pool, GSH/GSSG redox states and the activities of GSH reductase, GSH peroxidases and GST under metal stress (Anjum et al., 2012; Jozefczak et al., 2012).”
• The molecular mechanism of zinc and cadmium stress response in plants (2012, background): “It thus also acts as a ROS signaling molecule, mainly determined by the GSH:GSSG ratio, which reflects the oxidative state of the plant cell [75].”
• Glutathione in plants: biosynthesis and physiological role in environmental stress tolerance (2017, neutral): “Phytochelatins are reported to chelate Cd most effectively, followed by As (Jozefczak et al. 2012); the other preference order for chelation of metals are Ag[Bi[ Pb[Zn[Cu[Hg[Au (Pasternak et al.”
• Abiotic Stress in Plants and Metabolic Responses (2013, background): “is an essential component of the antioxidant system that donates an electron to unstable molecules such as ROS to make them less reactive and also can acts as a redox buffer in the recycling of ascorbic acid from its oxidized form to its reduced form by the enzyme dehy‐ droascorbate reductase [103].”
• Cadmium toxicity induces lipid peroxidation and alters cytokinin content and antioxidant enzyme activities in soybean (2014, background): “GSH is a key component in such metal scavenging due to the high affinity of metals to its thiol (-SH) group and as a precursor of phytochelatins (PCs) (Jozefczak et al. 2012).”
• Arsenic Uptake, Toxicity, Detoxification, and Speciation in Plants: Physiological, Biochemical, and Molecular Aspects (2018, background): “Likewise, the overproduction of GR, under As stress, has been observed in many other plants [32,50,310].”