Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3
Macronutrient Use Efficiency - Sulfur
in Arabidopsis thaliana
Patrycja Baraniecka and Stanislav Kopriva
Abstract Sulfur is an essential macronutrient required for proper growth of not
only plants but also fungi and prokaryotes. It is present in a wide variety of
metabolites such as amino acids: cysteine and methionine, coenzymes, vitamins
and many others having distinctive biological functions. Plants take up sulfur from
the soil in the form of sulfate via sulfate transporters. It is then reduced and
assimilated in bioorganic compounds where cysteine is the first stable product.
This process is very well described on both biochemical and molecular levels. Both
reduction and assimilation are tightly regulated in demand-driven manner. The
pathway has been extensively studied over last years because of important func-
tions of sulfur in plant metabolism and stress defence. Here we summarise the up-
to-date knowledge about the pathway and its regulation based mainly on the study
on model plant
Arabidopsis thaliana
. We also emphasize areas in which little is
known including the interconnection of sulfate metabolism with other nutrients.
Keywords Sulfur • Regulation • Arabidopsis • Sulfate transporters • Assimilation
• Metabolism • APS reductase • Cysteine biosynthesis • OAS-TL • Glutathione
• Methionine • Glucosinolates
Introduction
Apart from oxygen, carbon dioxide and water, plants require at least 14 mineral
elements for sufficient nutrition. Six of them: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium,
calcium, magnesium and sulfur are required in large amounts and these are called
macronutrients. The requirements for the rest, chlorine, boron, iron, manganese,
copper, zinc, nickel, and molybdenum, are much lower and these are called
micronutrients. Essential nutrients can be supplied to plants as fertilisers in case of
deficiency to increase plant yield and quality. This applies mainly to crop production
