Nitric oxide alleviates salt stress through protein S-nitrosylation and transcriptional regulation in tomato seedlings.

ABSTRACT

MAIN CONCLUSION: NO enhances the resistance of tomato seedlings to salt stress through protein S-nitrosylation and transcriptional regulation, which involves the regulation of MAPK signaling and carbohydrate metabolism. Nitric oxide (NO) regulates various physiological and biochemical processes and stress responses in plants. We found that S-nitrosoglutathione (GSNO) treatment significantly promoted the growth of tomato seedling under NaCl stress, indicating that NO plays a positive role in salt stress resistance. Moreover, GSNO pretreatment resulted in an increase of endogenous NO level, S-nitrosothiol (SNO) content, S-nitrosoglutathione reductase (GSNOR) activity and GSNOR expression under salt stress, implicating that S-nitrosylation might be involved in NO-alleviating salt stress. To further explore whether S-nitrosylation is a key molecular mechanism of NO-alleviating salt stress, the biotin-switch technique and liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry/mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) were conducted. A total of 1054 putative S-nitrosylated proteins have been identified, which were mainly enriched in chloroplast, cytoplasm and mitochondrion. Among them, 15 and 22 S-nitrosylated proteins were involved in mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signal transduction and carbohydrate metabolism, respectively. In MAPK signaling, various S-nitrosylated proteins, SAM1, SAM3, SAM, PP2C and SnRK, were down-regulated and MAPK, MAPKK and MAPKK5 were up-regulated at the transcriptional level by GSNO treatment under salt stress compared to NaCl treatment alone. The GSNO pretreatment could reduce ethylene production and ABA content under NaCl stress. In addition, the activities of enzyme identified in carbohydrate metabolism, their expression at the transcriptional level and the metabolite content were up-regulated by GSNO supplication under salt stress, resulting in the activation of glycolysis and tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA) cycles. Thus, these results demonstrated that NO might beneficially regulate MAPK signaling at transcriptional levels and activate carbohydrate metabolism at the post-translational and transcriptional level, protecting seedlings from energy deficiency and salinity, thereby alleviating salt stress-induced damage in tomato seedlings. It provides initial insights into the regulatory mechanisms of NO in response to salt stress.