Abstract
This review explores the role of reactive oxygen species (ROS)/Ca2+ in communication within reproductive structures in plants and animals. Many concepts have been described during the last years regarding how biosynthesis, generation products, antioxidant systems, and signal transduction involve ROS signaling, as well as its possible link with developmental processes and response to biotic and abiotic stresses. In this review, we first addressed classic key concepts in ROS and Ca2+ signaling in plants, both at the subcellular, cellular, and organ level. In the plant science field, during the last decades, new techniques have facilitated the in vivo monitoring of ROS signaling cascades. We will describe these powerful techniques in plants and compare them to those existing in animals. Development of new analytical techniques will facilitate the understanding of ROS signaling and their signal transduction pathways in plants and mammals. Many among those signaling pathways already have been studied in animals; therefore, a specific effort should be made to integrate this knowledge into plant biology. We here discuss examples of how changes in the ROS and Ca2+ signaling pathways can affect differentiation processes in plants, focusing specifically on reproductive processes where the ROS and Ca2+ signaling pathways influence the gametophyte functioning, sexual reproduction, and embryo formation in plants and animals. The study field regarding the role of ROS and Ca2+ in signal transduction is evolving continuously, which is why we reviewed the recent literature and propose here the potential targets affecting ROS in reproductive processes. We discuss the opportunities to integrate comparative developmental studies and experimental approaches into studies on the role of ROS/ Ca2+ in both plant and animal developmental biology studies, to further elucidate these crucial signaling pathways.
Highlights
Both the GSH pool and Grx are present in the cytosol and in the subcellular compartments [119]; since in vivo the roGFPs equilibrium with the 2GSH/GSSG couple is mediated by Grxs, it may be assumed that the roGFPs oxidation/reduction is limited by the availability of endogenous
We have revisited the literature concerning reactive oxygen species (ROS) signal transduction in sexual reproduction in plants and animals. These two systems are, apparently, biologically far different, common strategies concerning sexual reproductive patterns are shared among them. This is due to the fact that sexual reproduction evolved in eukaryotes well before the divergence of plants and animals [294]
Several reproductive patterns of angiosperms evolved similar to those in mammals, for instance, the embryo development surrounded by a maternal environment providing nutrients, the programmed arrest of the mature gamete before fertilization event, the presence of common parental imprinting evolved in both groups, and a selection based on male–male competition [35,296,297,298,299,300,301,302]
Summary
In response to environmental stimuli, plants are able to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) to control many and different physiological processes, such as responses to biotic stresses, activation of programmed cell death (PCD), germination, regulation of stomatal opening, sexual reproduction, or flowering time (see the vast literature available [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]). In plant and animal science, during the last decades, specific sensors have been developed that allow the in vivo detection of ROS and Ca2+ dynamics We describe how these powerful techniques can provide novel perspectives in developmental studies. We discuss recent advances in both lineages, and propose novel key players affecting ROS and Ca2+ signal transduction, which are to be explored in the future
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