Fructan and its relationship to abiotic stress tolerance in plants

Numerous studies have been published that attempted to correlate fructan concentrations with freezing and drought tolerance. Studies investigating the effect of fructan on liposomes indicated that a direct interaction between membranes and fructan was possible. This new area of research began to mov...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cellular and molecular life sciences : CMLS 2009-07, Vol.66 (13), p.2007-2023
Main Authors: Livingston, David P. III, Hincha, Dirk K, Heyer, Arnd G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Physiological
Animals
Biochemistry
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Carbohydrate Conformation
Carbohydrate Sequence
Cell Biology
Cell Membrane - metabolism
Drought resistance
Droughts
Flowers & plants
Freezing
Fructans - chemistry
Fructans - metabolism
Genetics
Humans
Life Sciences
Liposomes - metabolism
Membranes
Molecular Sequence Data
Molecular Structure
Organisms, Genetically Modified
Plants - genetics
Plants - metabolism
Polysaccharides - metabolism
Review
Stress analysis
Stress, Physiological
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Summary:Numerous studies have been published that attempted to correlate fructan concentrations with freezing and drought tolerance. Studies investigating the effect of fructan on liposomes indicated that a direct interaction between membranes and fructan was possible. This new area of research began to move fructan and its association with stress beyond mere correlation by confirming that fructan has the capacity to stabilize membranes during drying by inserting at least part of the polysaccharide into the lipid headgroup region of the membrane. This helps prevent leakage when water is removed from the system either during freezing or drought. When plants were transformed with the ability to synthesize fructan, a concomitant increase in drought and/or freezing tolerance was confirmed. These experiments indicate that besides an indirect effect of supplying tissues with hexose sugars, fructan has a direct protective effect that can be demonstrated by both model systems and genetic transformation.
ISSN:1420-682X
1420-9071
DOI:10.1007/s00018-009-0002-x