re all life forms possess a tightly knit and intricately regulated network of metal homeostasis proteins. Existing knowledge of these proteins show a surprising extent of similarity between metal homeostasis networks in widely differing organisms, i.e. humans, yeast and plants. In the hyperaccumulator plant Thlaspi caerulescens, a metal-sequestering protein has previously been found to exhibit high similarity to its counterpart in A. thaliana, but is regulated differently. Advancing beyond these earlier results, the work published now on A. halleri has finally made it possible to achieve a global view of the complex metal homeostasis network in a metal hyperaccumulator plant.

The plant species Arabidopsis halleri is naturally found on soils heavily polluted with cadmium and zinc. It exhibits extreme metal tolerance and belongs to a small group of approximately 400 taxa of plants which accumulate heavy metals to extraordinary concentrations specifically in their above-ground biomass. These traits are potentially of great interest for the cost-effective clean-up of metal-polluted soils. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam and at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle have pursued the mechanisms which underlie metal hyperaccumulation and tolerance at the molecular level. For this they exploited the fact that A. halleri is very closely related to the genetic model plant A. thaliana, of which the genome has been sequenced. In contrast to A. halleri, A. thaliana is metal sensitive and immobilises excess metal ions in the roots, thereby limiting the accumulation of metals in above-ground tissues.

Contrasting metal homeostasis of both species and their close genetic relationship enabled the researchers to compare gene messages (messenger RNA) of both species utilizing commercially available A. thaliana GeneChips. These chips contained probes for approximately one-third of the genes encoded in the ge
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Contact: Dr. Ute Krmer
kraemer@mpimp-golm.mpg.de
49-331-567-8357
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
4-Dec-2003

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