Functional Genomics and Plant Molecular Imaging, Center for Protein Engineering, Department of Life Sciences (B22), University of Liège, Liège, Belgium.
Curr Opin Plant Biol. 2011 Jun;14(3):252-9. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2011.04.003. Epub 2011 Apr 29.
In the course of evolution, plants adapted to widely differing metal availabilities in soils and therefore represent an important source of natural variation of metal homeostasis networks. Research on plant metal homeostasis can thus provide insights into the functioning, regulation and adaptation of biological networks. Here, we describe major recent breakthroughs in the understanding of the genetic and molecular basis of metal hyperaccumulation and associated hypertolerance, a naturally selected complex trait which represents an extreme adaptation of the metal homeostasis network. Investigations in this field reveal further the molecular alterations underlying the evolution of natural phenotypic diversity and provide a highly relevant framework for comparative genomics.
在进化过程中,植物适应了土壤中广泛存在的不同金属可用性,因此代表了金属稳态网络自然变异的重要来源。因此,对植物金属稳态的研究可以深入了解生物网络的功能、调节和适应。在这里,我们描述了在理解金属超积累和相关超耐性的遗传和分子基础方面的重大最新突破,这是一种自然选择的复杂特征,代表了金属稳态网络的极端适应。该领域的研究进一步揭示了自然表型多样性进化的分子变化,并为比较基因组学提供了一个高度相关的框架。