John Innes Centre and University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7UH, UK.
Metallomics. 2017 Jul 19;9(7):813-823. doi: 10.1039/c7mt00136c.
Iron plays a crucial role in biochemistry and is an essential micronutrient for plants and humans alike. Although plentiful in the Earth's crust it is not usually found in a form readily accessible for plants to use. They must therefore sense and interact with their environment, and have evolved two different molecular strategies to take up iron in the root. Once inside, iron is complexed with chelators and distributed to sink tissues where it is used predominantly in the production of enzyme cofactors or components of electron transport chains. The processes of iron uptake, distribution and metabolism are overseen by tight regulatory mechanisms, at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level, to avoid iron concentrations building to toxic excess. Iron is also loaded into seeds, where it is stored in vacuoles or in ferritin. This is important for human nutrition as seeds form the edible parts of many crop species. As such, increasing iron in seeds and other tissues is a major goal for biofortification efforts by both traditional breeding and biotechnological approaches.
铁在生物化学中起着至关重要的作用，是植物和人类必需的微量元素。尽管地壳中铁的含量丰富，但通常不以植物易于利用的形式存在。因此，它们必须感知和与环境相互作用，并进化出两种不同的分子策略来在根部吸收铁。一旦进入根部，铁就与螯合剂结合，并分布到汇组织中，在那里它主要用于酶辅因子或电子传递链组件的生产。铁的摄取、分布和代谢过程受到转录和转录后水平的严格调控机制的监管，以避免铁浓度积聚到毒性过剩。铁也被装载到种子中，在那里它储存在液泡或铁蛋白中。这对于人类营养很重要，因为种子是许多作物物种可食用部分的来源。因此，增加种子和其他组织中的铁含量是传统育种和生物技术方法进行生物强化的主要目标。
