Most of the heavy metals, and metals/metalloids are released into the nature either by natural phenomenon or anthropogenic activities. Being sessile organisms, plants are constantly exposed to heavy metals (HMs) in the environment. The metal non-hyperaccumulating plants are susceptible to excess metal concentrations. They tend to sequester metals in their root vacuoles by forming complexes with metal ligands, as a detoxification strategy. In contrast, the metal-hyperaccumulating plants have adaptive intrinsic regulatory mechanisms to hyperaccumulate or sequester excess amounts of HMs into their above-ground tissues rather than accumulating them in roots. They have unique abilities to successfully carry out normal physiological functions without showing any visible stress symptoms unlike metal non-hyperaccumulators. The unique abilities of accumulating excess metals in hyperaccumulators partly owes to constitutive overexpression of metal transporters and ability to quickly translocate HMs from root to shoot. Various metal ligands also play key roles in metal hyperaccumulating plants. These metal hyperaccumulating plants can be used in metal contaminated sites to clean-up soils. Exploiting the knowledge of natural populations of metal hyperaccumulators complemented with cutting-edge biotechnological tools can be useful in the future. The present review highlights the recent developments in physiological and molecular mechanisms of metal accumulation of hyperaccumulator plants in the lights of metal ligands and transporters. The contrasting mechanisms of metal accumulation between hyperaccumulators and non-hyperaccumulators are thoroughly compared. Moreover, uses of different metal hyperaccumulators for phytoremediation purposes are also discussed in detail. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Physiological and molecular mechanisms of metal accumulation in hyperaccumulator plants.
O. Sytar,Supriya Ghosh,H. Malínská,Marek Živčák,M. Brestič
Published 2020 in Physiologia Plantarum : An International Journal for Plant Biology
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- Publication year
2020
- Venue
Physiologia Plantarum : An International Journal for Plant Biology
- Publication date
2020-11-20
- Fields of study
Biology, Medicine, Chemistry, Environmental Science
- Identifiers
- External record
- Source metadata
Semantic Scholar, PubMed
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