Cryopreservation can be a safe and cost-effective tool for the long-term storage of plant germplasm. In Arabidopsis, the ability to recover from cryogenic treatment was lost as growth progressed. Growth could be restored in 48-h seedlings, whereas 72-h seedlings died after cryogenic treatment. Why seedling age and survival are negatively correlated is an interesting issue. A comparative transcriptomics was performed to screen differentially expressed genes between 48- and 72-h seedlings after exposure to cryoprotectant. Among differentially expressed genes, oxidative stress response genes played important roles in cryoprotectant treatment, and peroxidation was a key factor related to cell survival. Seedlings underwent more peroxidation at 72-h than at 48-h. A comprehensive analysis indicated that peroxidation injured membrane systems leading to photophosphorylation and oxidative phosphorylation damage. Furthermore, the apoptosis-like events were found in cryogenic treatment of Arabidopsis seedlings. 48- and 72-h seedlings underwent different degrees of membrane lipid peroxidation during cryoprotectant treatment, and reducing the injury of oxidative stress was an important factor to successful cryopreservation. This study provided a novel insight of genetic regulatory mechanisms in cryopreservation, and established an excellent model to test and evaluate the effect of exogenous antioxidants and conventional cryoprotectants in plant cryopreservation.
Keywords: AFLPa; Arabidopsis thaliana; BLAST; Cryopreservation; EST; FDA; LN; MDA; MS; Murashige and Skoog [1]; NCBI; National Center for Biotechnology Information; Oxidative stress; PVS; Peroxidation; ROS; TBA; TCA; TDFs; basic local alignment search tool; cDNA-AFLP; expressed sequence tag; fluorescein diacetate; liquid nitrogen; malondialdehyde; mplified fragment length polymorphism; plant vitrification solution; qRT-PCR; quantitative real time-PCR; reactive oxygen species; thiobarbituric acid; transcript-derived fragments; trichloroacetic acid.
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