The majority of ecotoxicological studies are performed under stable and optimal conditions, whereas in reality the complexity of the natural environment faces organisms with multiple stressors of different type and origin, which can activate pathways of response often difficult to interpret. In particular, aquatic organisms living in estuarine zones already impacted by metal contamination can b...

In this research, the effects of zeatin riboside (0.6, 0.8, 1, 1.2 and 1.4 mg l-1), duration of heat stress of 35 °C (6, 8, 10 and 12 days) and mannitol (0, 10, 20, 30 and 40 mg l-1) on anther culture of four eggplant cultivars were investigated in independent experiments. These experiments were performed according to a factorial arrangement in a randomized complete blocks design layout. The re...

Based on experimental data from E. coli cultures, we have devised a mathematical model in the GMA-power law formalism that describes the central and L-carnitine metabolism in and between two steady states, non-osmotic and hyperosmotic (0.3 M NaCl). A key feature of this model is the introduction of type of kinetic order, the osmotic stress kinetic orders (g(OSn)), derived from the power law gen...

In China, Scrophularia ningpoensis Hemsl (Scrophulariaceae) has been cultivated for many years; however, the effects of drought on the content of secondary metabolites in Radix Scrophulariaceae are still unknown. The study investigated the medicinal components of S. ningpoensis including harpagoside, aucubin, catalpol, harpagide, and cinnamic acid in relation to drought stress. Three ecotypes o...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression and play critical roles in growth and development as well as stress responses in eukaryotes. miRNA biogenesis in plants requires a processing complex that consists of the core components DICER-LIKE 1 (DCL1), SERRATE (SE) and HYPONASTIC LEAVES (HYL1). Here we show that inactivation of functionally redundant members of the SnRK2 kinases, which are the c...

Plant zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) comprise a large protein family and they are mainly involved in abiotic stress tolerance. Although Arabidopsis RING/FYVE/PHD ZFP At5g62460 (AtRZFP) is found to bind to zinc, whether it is involved in abiotic stress tolerance is still unknown. In the present study, we characterized the roles of AtRZFP in response to abiotic stresses. The expression of AtRZFP was...

Stress responses are of particular importance to microorganisms, because their habitats are subjected to continual changes in temperature, osmotic pressure, and nutrients availability. Stressors (and stress factors), may be of chemical, physical, or biological nature. While stress to microorganisms is frequently caused by the surrounding environment, the growth of microbial cells on its own may...

The stress-induced epimutations could be inherited over generations and play important roles in plant adaption to stressful environments. Upland rice has been domesticated in water-limited environments for thousands of years and accumulated drought-induced epimutations of DNA methylation, making it epigenetically differentiated from lowland rice. To study the epigenetic differentiation between ...

Osmotic stress has been shown to regulate cytoskeletal protein expression. It is generally known that vimentin is rapidly degraded during apoptosis by multiple caspases, resulting in diverse vimentin fragments. Despite the existence of the known apoptotic vimentin fragments, we demonstrated in our study the existence of different forms of vimentin VIM I, II, III, and IV with different molecular...

Escherichia coli lives in the mammalian gastrointestinal tract anaerobically at high osmolarity as well as in the soil aerobically at varying osmolarities. Adaptation to these varying environmental conditions is crucial for growth and survival of E. coli. Two-dimensional protein gels were used to visualize global time-dependent changes (10 to 60 min) in the proteome of cells responding to osmot...