Transgenic tobacco plants having a higher level of methionine are more sensitive to oxidative stress

What is it about?

Transgenic tobacco plants overexpressing cystathionine γ-synthase (FA plants), methionine's main regulatory enzyme, accumulate significantly higher levels of methionine compared to wild-type plants. However, these plants exhibited slightly reduced growth and had higher contents of stress-related metabolites. Although they had higher levels of stress-related compounds, they were more sensitive than wild-type plants to short- and long-term oxidative stresses. During oxidative stress, the primary metabolic profile of FA plants was altered less compared to wild-type.

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Why is it important?

We proposed that FA plants were having higher levels of methionine suffer from stress under non-stress conditions. This might be one of the reasons for their lesser ability to cope with oxidative stress when it appeared. The results also indicate that the delta changes in the metabolites between non-stress and stress conditions are essential for enabling the plants to cope with stress conditions.

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