A role for oxalic acid generation in ozone-induced signallization in Arabidopis cells

Ozone (O3) is an air pollutant with an impact increasingly important in our industrialized world. It affects human health and productivity in various crops. We provide the evidences that treatment of Arabidopsis thaliana with O3 results in ascorbate-derived oxalic acid production. Using cultured cells of A. thaliana as a model, here we further showed that oxalic acid induces activation of anion channels that trigger depolarization of the cell, increase in cytosolic Ca2+ concentration, generation of reactive oxygen species and cell death. We confirmed that O3 reacts with ascorbate in the culture, thus resulting in production of oxalic acid and this could be part of the O3-induced signalling pathways that trigger programmed cell death.