Advances in Plant Nitrogen Metabolism

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 January 2018) | Viewed by 7687

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, 116 St & 85 Ave, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada
Interests: plant molecular biology; N metabolism; Nitrogen use efficiency; biological nitrogen fixation; Nitrogenase; sustainable agriculture; alanine aminotransferase; plant microbiome
Co-Innovation Center for Sustainable Forestry in Southern China, College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Interests: Nitrogen use efficiency; Nitrogen metabolism; Carbon metabolism; amiRNA; Gene over-expression; Transcription factor; Gene regulation; abiotic stress; secondary metabolites

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Nitrogen (N) is an essential element for life and plants are no exception. N2 is abundant in the atmosphere, but is also biological inert. Plants acquire the N they need for primary metabolism from the soil and from nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the form of biologically-reactive (or fixed) molecules, such as ammonia, nitrate, urea, and amino acids. Nitrogen availability directly effects plant growth, for agriculturally relevant plants, fixed-nitrogen levels directly influences yield of biomass and grain. Fixed nitrogen tends to be a scarce resource in non-fertilized soils, while in fertilized soils (from either manure or synthetic N-fertilizers), nitrogen tends to be applied at high levels, causing an over-abundance of N that the crop plants cannot take up fully. On both a local and global scale, this means that fixed nitrogen distribution is low in some regions and high in others resulting in plants that are either starved for nitrogen and produce low yields or plants that cannot utilize all the available N causing environmentally damaging nitrogen pollution in our waterways and atmosphere.

As a group, plant nitrogen metabolism scientists are researching how nitrogen is taken up, how metabolism is regulated on both a cellular and developmental level, what enzymatic pathways are used, and how nitrogen is stored and remobilized from source to sink tissues. We investigate nitrogen metabolism and agronomy, and nitrogen use efficiency and yield studies. Researchers are also studying the interactions between plants and soil microbes, rhizosphere microbes, and plant microbiome species, and how these associations and commensalism benefit plant nitrogen metabolism. Other researchers investigate ways to improve N metabolism using plant breeding, biotechnology, and synthetic biology.

This Special Issue is aimed at establishing a wide collection of articles (original research papers, hypotheses, opinions, reviews, modeling approaches and methods) that focus on the process of nitrogen metabolism from many different aspects, including, but not limited to, molecular biology, biotechnology, synthetic biology, plant microbiome, biological nitrogen fixation and plants, nitrogen use efficiency, whole plant and root studies, senescence, agronomics, field trials and transcriptome, proteome, metabolome and epigenome studies. Additionally,, this Special Issue will bring together articles researching crop plants, native species, model plants, aquatic plants and trees. We are particularly interested in receiving contributions that address plant nitrogen metabolism in ways that allow fellow colleagues to gain insight into advancing their own research and further our collective understanding of this complex and essential metabolism.

Dr. Perrin H Beatty
Dr. Mei Han
Guest Editor

Keywords

  • Nitrogen metabolism
  • Nitrogen use efficiency
  • Nitrogen uptake efficiency
  • nitrogen utilization efficiency
  • Nitrogen remobilization
  • Nitrogen regulation
  • agronomy
  • Nitrogen and yield
  • microbiome
  • plant breeding
  • biotechnology
  • Nitrogen and roots
  • Nitrogen and senescence
  • transcriptome
  • proteome
  • metabolome
  • epigenome
  • crop plants
  • native species
  • aquatic plants
  • trees

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

22 pages, 6616 KiB  
Article
Transcriptome and Metabolome Analyses Reveal That Nitrate Strongly Promotes Nitrogen and Carbon Metabolism in Soybean Roots, but Tends to Repress It in Nodules
by Shinji Ishikawa, Yuki Ono, Norikuni Ohtake, Kuni Sueyoshi, Sayuri Tanabata and Takuji Ohyama
Plants 2018, 7(2), 32; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants7020032 - 12 Apr 2018
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 5846
Abstract
Leguminous plants form root nodules with rhizobia that fix atmospheric dinitrogen (N2) for the nitrogen (N) nutrient. Combined nitrogen sources, particular nitrate, severely repress nodule growth and nitrogen fixation activity in soybeans (Glycine max [L.] Merr.). A microarray-based transcriptome analysis [...] Read more.
Leguminous plants form root nodules with rhizobia that fix atmospheric dinitrogen (N2) for the nitrogen (N) nutrient. Combined nitrogen sources, particular nitrate, severely repress nodule growth and nitrogen fixation activity in soybeans (Glycine max [L.] Merr.). A microarray-based transcriptome analysis and the metabolome analysis were carried out for the roots and nodules of hydroponically grown soybean plants treated with 5 mM of nitrate for 24 h and compared with control without nitrate. Gene expression ratios of nitrate vs. the control were highly enhanced for those probesets related to nitrate transport and assimilation and carbon metabolism in the roots, but much less so in the nodules, except for the nitrate transport and asparagine synthetase. From the metabolome analysis, the concentration ratios of metabolites for the nitrate treatment vs. the control indicated that most of the amino acids, phosphorous-compounds and organic acids in roots were increased about twofold in the roots, whereas in the nodules most of the concentrations of the amino acids, P-compounds and organic acids were decreased while asparagine increased exceptionally. These results may support the hypothesis that nitrate primarily promotes nitrogen and carbon metabolism in the roots, but mainly represses this metabolism in the nodules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Plant Nitrogen Metabolism)
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