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Hydrogen sulfide protects soybean seedlings against drought-induced oxidative stress

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Abstract

Increasing evidence indicates that hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is the third “gas signal molecule” after NO and CO in animal. In the present study, we found that soybean (Glycine max L.) seedlings sprayed with exogenous H2S donor NaHS prolonged the longer survival time of life, and enlarged higher biomass of both leaf and root than in non-sprayed controls under continuous drought stress. With the continuous drought stress, the content of chlorophyll in the leaves of both Xu-1 and Xu-6 cultivar of soybean decreased dramatically. The drought-induced decrease in chlorophyll could be alleviated by spraying H2S donor. It was also shown that spraying with H2S donor dramatically retained higher activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD, EC 1.1.5.1.1), catalase (CAT, EC1.11.1.6) and lower activity of lipoxygenases (LOX, EC 1.13.11.12), delayed excessive accumulation of malondialdehyde, hydrogen peroxide, and superoxide anion (O ·−2 ) compared with the control. These results suggest that H2S can increase drought tolerance in soybean seedlings by acting as an antioxidant signal molecule for the response.

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Abbreviations

CAT:

Catalase

CO:

Carbon monoxide

H2S:

Hydrogen sulfide

LOX:

Lipoxygenase

MDA:

Malondialdehyde

NaHS:

Sodium hydrosulfide

NO:

Nitric oxide

ROS:

Reactive oxygen species

SOD:

Superoxide dismutase

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Great Project of Natural Science Foundation at Anhui Provincial Education Department (ZD200910), the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (070411009), and the innovation fund to undergraduate students at Hefei University of Technology (XS0637, 08072)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, 230009, Hefei, Anhui, China

    Hua Zhang, Hao Jiao, Zhao-Jun Wei & Jian-Ping Luo

  2. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Hua Zhang & Russell L. Jones

  3. Institute of Subtropical Crop Zhejiang Province, 325005, Wenzhou, China

    Cheng-Xi Jiang

  4. Life Science College, Anhui Science and Technology University, 233100, Bengbu, China

    Song-Hua Wang

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  1. Hua Zhang
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  2. Hao Jiao
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  3. Cheng-Xi Jiang
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Correspondence to Hua Zhang.

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Communicated by G. Bartosz.

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Zhang, H., Jiao, H., Jiang, CX. et al. Hydrogen sulfide protects soybean seedlings against drought-induced oxidative stress. Acta Physiol Plant 32, 849–857 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-010-0469-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-010-0469-y

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