The Significance of Reactive Oxygen Species and Antioxidant Defense System in Plants: A Concise Overview

Various abiotic stresses lead to the overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in plants which are highly reactive and toxic and cause damage to proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and DNA which ultimately results in oxidative stress. The ROS comprises both free radical (O(2)(-), superoxide radicals; OH, hydroxyl radical; HO(2), perhydroxy radical and RO, alkoxy radicals) and non-radical (molecular) forms (H(2)O(2), hydrogen peroxide and (1)O(2), singlet oxygen). In chloroplasts, photosystem I and II (PSI and PSII) are the major sites for the production of (1)O(2) and O(2)(-). In mitochondria, complex I, ubiquinone and complex III of electron transport chain (ETC) are the major sites for the generation of O(2)(-). The antioxidant defense machinery protects plants against oxidative stress damages. Plants possess very efficient enzymatic (superoxide dismutase, SOD; catalase, CAT; ascorbate peroxidase, APX; glutathione reductase, GR; monodehydroascorbate reductase, MDHAR; dehydroascorbate reductase, DHAR; glutathione peroxidase, GPX; guaicol peroxidase, GOPX and glutathione-S- transferase, GST) and non-enzymatic (ascorbic acid, ASH; glutathione, GSH; phenolic compounds, alkaloids, non-protein amino acids and α-tocopherols) antioxidant defense systems which work in concert to control the cascades of uncontrolled oxidation and protect plant cells from oxidative damage by scavenging of ROS. ROS also influence the expression of a number of genes and therefore control the many processes like growth, cell cycle, programmed cell death (PCD), abiotic stress responses, pathogen defense, systemic signaling and development. In this review, we describe the biochemistry of ROS and their production sites, and ROS scavenging antioxidant defense machinery. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Oxidative stress refers to elevated intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that cause damage to lipids, proteins and DNA. Oxidative stress has been linked to a myriad of pathologies. However, elevated ROS also act as signaling molecules in the maintenance of physiological functions--a process termed redox biology. In this review we discuss the two faces of ROS--redox biology and oxidative stress--and their contribution to both physiological and pathological conditions. Redox biology involves a small increase in ROS levels that activates signaling pathways to initiate biological processes, while oxidative stress denotes high levels of ROS that result in damage to DNA, protein or lipids. Thus, the response to ROS displays hormesis, given that the opposite effect is observed at low levels compared with that seen at high levels. Here, we argue that redox biology, rather than oxidative stress, underlies physiological and pathological conditions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Several reactive oxygen species (ROS) are continuously produced in plants as byproducts of aerobic metabolism. Depending on the nature of the ROS species, some are highly toxic and rapidly detoxified by various cellular enzymatic and nonenzymatic mechanisms. Whereas plants are surfeited with mechanisms to combat increased ROS levels during abiotic stress conditions, in other circumstances plants appear to purposefully generate ROS as signaling molecules to control various processes including pathogen defense, programmed cell death, and stomatal behavior. This review describes the mechanisms of ROS generation and removal in plants during development and under biotic and abiotic stress conditions. New insights into the complexity and roles that ROS play in plants have come from genetic analyses of ROS detoxifying and signaling mutants. Considering recent ROS-induced genome-wide expression analyses, the possible functions and mechanisms for ROS sensing and signaling in plants are compared with those in animals and yeast.