Search

Oligopeptides transporter (OPT) can maintain intracellular metal homeostat, however, their evolutionary characteristics, as well as their expression patterns in heavy metal exposure, remain unclear. Compared with previous OPT family identification, we identified 94 OPT genes (including 21 in potato) in potato and 4 other plants by HMMER program based on OPT domain (PF03169) for the first time. Secondly, conserved and special OPTs were found through comprehensive analysis. Thirdly, spatio-temporal tissue specific expression patterns and co-expression frameworks of potato OPT genes under different heavy metal stress were constructed. These data can provide excellent gene resources for food security and soil remediation. • A hidden Markov model based on OPT domain (PF03169) was used to identify OPT gene from five species of plants. • Some specific or conserved OPT genes were found. • A specific or co-expression framework for StOPTs exposed to five metal ions was constructed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy metal stress (HMS) is one of the most destructive abiotic stresses which seriously affects the growth and development of plants. Recent studies have shown significant progress in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying plant tolerance to HMS. In general, three core signals are involved in plants' responses to HMS; these are mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK), calcium, and hormonal (abscisic acid) signals. In addition to these signal components, other regulatory factors, such as microRNAs and membrane proteins, also play an important role in regulating HMS responses in plants. Membrane proteins interact with the highly complex and heterogeneous lipids in the plant cell environment. The function of membrane proteins is affected by the interactions between lipids and lipid-membrane proteins. Our review findings also indicate the possibility of membrane protein-lipid-metal ion interactions in regulating metal homeostasis in plant cells. In this review, we investigated the role of membrane proteins with specific substrate recognition in regulating cell metal homeostasis. The understanding of the possible interaction networks and upstream and downstream pathways is developed. In addition, possible interactions between membrane proteins, metal ions, and lipids are discussed to provide new ideas for studying metal homeostasis in plant cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The planar perovskite solar cells (PSCs) using TiO2 as the electron transport layer (ETL) are undergoing a stagnated efficiency improvement, which the inferior TiO2 ETL mainly limits. Herein, a flocculating‐regulated TiO2 deposition using SnCl2·2H2O is reported as the flocculate to control the nanoparticle size finely for optimizing TiO2 deposition and to achieve a synergistic Sn doping. The SnCl2·2H2O incorporated into bath precursor can bridge‐link the suspended nanoparticles, which promotes the precipitation of large‐sized nanoparticles and leaves the smaller‐sized nanoparticles for deposition, leading to a compact TiO2 film with marked reduced surface roughness. Meanwhile, along with flocculating‐regulated TiO2 deposition, it can also be achieved the Sn‐doping of TiO2, which increases the conductivity of TiO2 thin films by ≈2.5 times. As a consequence, attributing to the optimized interface contact and accelerated interfacial electron transport, the planar PSCs achieved a certification efficiency of 25.85%, the highest value among the TiO2‐based planar PSCs to date. In addition, the PSCs can maintain 99% of their initial efficiency after more than 4500 h of storage in ambient air, showing excellent stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metal tolerance protein (MTP) family is a very old family with evolutionary conservation and less specific amplification. It seems to retain the original functions of the ancestral genes and plays an important role in maintaining metal homeostasis in plant cells. We identified the potato MTP family members for the first time, the specific and conservative StMPTs were discovered by using systematic and comparative omics. To be surprised, members of the StMTP family seem to have mutated before the evolution of dicotyledon and monocotyledon, and even the loss of the entire subfamily (subfamily G6, G7). Interestingly, StMTP9 represents the conserved structure of the entire subfamily involved in toxic metal regulation. However, the gene structure and transmembrane domain of StMTP8 have undergone specific evolution, showing that the transmembrane domain (Motif13) located at the NH2 terminal has been replaced by the signal peptide domain, so it was selected as the control gene of StMTP9. Through real-time fluorescence quantitative analysis of StMTPs under Cd and Zn stress, a co-expression network was constructed, and it was found that StMTP9 responded significantly to Cd stress, while StMTP8 did the opposite. What excites us is that by introducing StMTPs 8/9 into the ∆ycf1 yeast cadmium-sensitive mutant strain, the functional complementation experiment proved that StMTPs 8/9 can restore Cd tolerance. In particular, StMTP9 can greatly reduce the cadmium content in yeast cells, while StMTP8 cannot. These findings provide a reference for further research on the molecular mechanism of potato toxic metal accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]