Sugar metabolism in the desiccation tolerant grass Oropetium thomaeum in response to environmental stresses

Oropetium thomaeum is a desiccation tolerant grass and acquisition of desiccation tolerance is correlated with changes in carbohydrate metabolism. Here we address the question whether the changes in carbohydrate metabolism are specific to the dehydration process or whether other environmental factors such as high temperature, low temperature, hypoxia, salinity or exogenous ABA application trigger the same or different changes in the sugar metabolism. Fifteen different sugar metabolites were identified by GC/MS, including erythritol, arabinose, fructose, galactose, glucose, myo-inositol, sedoheptulose, sucrose, trehalose, galactinol, maltose, raffinose, manninotriose and stachyose. Together with starch, these sugars were placed into the pathways of sucrose metabolism and raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFOs) metabolism, as well as into the group of rare sugars. By comparing the changes of sugars under various stresses, we concluded that the changes in the sugar metabolism are both convergent and divergent in response to different stresses. Except for the general response to stress, such as starch degradation, the changes of specific sugar metabolites reflect a stress -specific response of O. thomaeum. Erythritol seems to be specific for dehydration, myo-inositol for salt stress and trehalose for hypoxia stress. Similar as dehydration, low temperature, salt stress and ABA application resulted in the accumulation of sucrose and RFOs in O. thomaeum, which indicates that these stresses share high similarity with dehydration. Thus it is proposed that sucrose and RFOs have a general protective role under these stresses. In contrast sucrose and RFOs did not accumulate in response to high temperature or hypoxia whose effects tend to be consumptive and destructive. The accumulation of galactose, melibiose and manninotriose demonstrate that RFOs are degraded under stress. The accumulation of these sugar metabolites might result from the reaction of RFOs and stress-produced hydroxyl radicals, which supports a possible role of RFOs in stress defense. In addition, ABA application led to substantial synthesis of stachyose which occurs only in response to dehydration, indicating that stachyose synthesis is possibly closely related to ABA in O. thomaeum.