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Trehalose treatment alters carbon partitioning and reduces the accumulation of individual metabolites but does not affect salt tolerance in the green microalga Dunaliella bardawil

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Abstract

The effects of trehalose (Tre), a non-reducing disaccharide, on metabolic changes, antioxidant status, and salt tolerance in Dunaliella bardawil cells were investigated. Algal suspensions containing 1, 2, and 3 M NaCl were treated with 5 mM Tre. While the content of pigments, reducing sugars, proteins, glycerol, and ascorbate pool accumulated with increasing salinity, the content of non-reducing sugars, starch, amino acids, proline, hydrogen peroxide, and lipid peroxidation level decreased significantly. Tre-treated cells showed a decrease in pigments content, reducing sugars, starch, proteins, amino acids, proline, glycerol, and the activity of non-specific peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase, but an increase in non-reducing sugars, oxidized ascorbate, and ascorbate peroxidase activity occurred unchanged in the ascorbate pool. However, the density and fresh weight of the cells remained statistically unchanged in all Tre-treated and untreated cultures. These results suggest that D. bardawil cells potentially tolerate different salt levels by accumulating metabolites, whereas Tre treatment changes carbon partitioning and significantly reduces beneficial metabolites without altering salt tolerance. Therefore, the regulation of carbon partitioning rather than the amount of assimilated carbon may play an important role in inducing salinity tolerance of D. bardawil. However, Tre is not able to enhance the salt tolerance of halotolerants and is even economically damaging due to the reduction of unique metabolites such as glycerol and β-carotene.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Deputy of Research at the University of Sistan and Baluchestan for monetary donation in the form of a grant for M.Sc. research project.

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This work was funded by the Deputy of Research at the University of Sistan and Baluchestan in the form of a grant for M.Sc. research project.

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  1. Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran

    Mahdieh Panjekobi & Alireza Einali

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  1. Mahdieh Panjekobi
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MP: Laboratory investigation. AE: Supervision, Conceptualization, Writing- Original draft preparation, Funding acquisition, experimental design, Data curation, Formal analysis, Project Administration, Writing- Reviewing and Edit.

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Correspondence to Alireza Einali.

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Panjekobi, M., Einali, A. Trehalose treatment alters carbon partitioning and reduces the accumulation of individual metabolites but does not affect salt tolerance in the green microalga Dunaliella bardawil. Physiol Mol Biol Plants 27, 2333–2344 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-021-01078-z

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