UC Davis

Plant carbon status is optimized for normal growth but is affected by abiotic stress. Here, we used ¹⁴C-labeling to provide the first holistic picture of carbon use changes during short-term osmotic, salinity, and cold stress in Arabidopsis thaliana. This could inform on the early mechanisms plants use to survive adverse environment, which is important for efficient agricultural production. We found that carbon allocation from source to sinks, and partitioning into major metabolite pools in the source leaf, sink leaves and roots showed both conserved and divergent responses to the stresses examined. Carbohydrates changed under all abiotic stresses applied; plants re-partitioned ¹⁴C to maintain sugar levels under stress, primarily by reducing ¹⁴C into the storage compounds in the source leaf, and decreasing ¹⁴C into the pools used for growth processes in the roots. Salinity and cold increased ¹⁴C-flux into protein, but as the stress progressed, protein degradation increased to produce amino acids, presumably for osmoprotection. Our work also emphasized that stress regulated the carbon channeled into starch, and its metabolic turnover. These stress-induced changes in starch metabolism and sugar export in the source were partly accompanied by transcriptional alteration in the T6P/SnRK1 regulatory pathway that are normally activated by carbon starvation.