Book with abstracts from the COST Action 0905 meeting in ... - UMB

MINERAL ACCUMULATION IN NATURAL POPULATIONS OF
ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA
Ivan Baxter 1,2 , Christian Hermans 3 , Brett Lahner 2 , Elena Yakubova 2 , Marina Tikhonova 2 , He
Bing 2 , Nathalie Verbruggen 3 , Dai-yin Chao 2,4 , David E. Salt 2,4
1 United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service Plant Genetics
Research Unit, Donal Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, Mo, USA;
2 Center for Plant Stress Physiology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, In, USA;
3 Laboratory of Plant Physiology and Molecular Genetics, Université Libre de Bruxelles,
Brussels, Belgium;
4 University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Great Northern Wasteland, United Kingdom.
Keywords: ionome, Arabidopsis, hydroponics, soil culture, elemental correlation
In order to grow on soils that vary widely in chemical composition, plants have evolved
mechanisms for altering the elemental composition of their tissues. The variation that exists
within a species can be exploited to understand how individual elemental pathways interact
with each other and to identify genes important for these processes. We analyzed the
elemental composition (ionome) of 96 accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana grown in
hydroponic culture and soil using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The levels
of 17-19 elements were analyzed in roots and leaves from the hydroponic experiment and
leaves and seeds from the soil experiments. Significant genetic effects were detected for
almost every element measured in every experiment. We observed very few correlations
between the elemental composition of the leaves and either the roots or seeds. There were
many pairs of elements that were significantly correlated with each other within a tissue and
experiment, but almost none of these pairs were consistently correlated across tissues and
growth media, a phenomenon observed in several previous studies. These results suggest that
the ionome is highly dynamic, yet tightly controlled by genes and gene x environment
interactions. The dataset provides a valuable resource for mapping studies to identify genes
regulating mineral concentration in plant tissues.