Physio-biochemical and proteome analysis of chickpea in early phases of cold stress

Intensive and short-term strategies can aid in more rapid screening with informative and reliable results for long-term investigations under cold stress (CS). The integration of cellular analysis of chickpea during 0, 2,4, 8, and 12 h CS supplied us with novel possible responsive components and the possible interactions embedded inside, still remaining a Maze. Seedlings showed a biphasic pattern of responses overtime. The transitory phase happened after 8 h, when cells are presumably experiencing a new stage of responses and setting the stage for long-term adjustments. Physio-biochemical analysis confirmed the direct effect of fatty acids composition, lipoxygenase activity and antioxidant systems in cell responses under CS. Also, proteome results using MALDI-TOF-TOF and/or LC-MS/MS were able to differentiate changes in early phases of CS. Two-dimensional gel analysis results showed the possible targets of CS as mitochondria, chloroplast, organelle-nucleus communications, storage resources, stress and defense, protein degradation and signal transduction that confirmed the cell intended to re-establish a new homeostasis, in energy and primary metabolites to adapt to long-term CS. Here we propose a time course dynamic assessing multi-dimensional approaches for CS studies as one of the first studies in short-term treatment to progressively fill in the gaps between physio-biochemical and molecular events and touch the cell architecture for a better comprehension of the nature of plant stress response. (C) 2013 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.