Abstract
Trace gas monitoring plays an important role in many areas of life sciences ranging from agrotechnology, microbiology, molecular biology, physiology, and phytopathology. In plants, many processes can be followed by their low-concentration gas emission, for compounds such as ethylene, nitric oxide, ethanol or other volatile organic compounds (VOCs). For this, numerous gas-sensing devices are currently available based on various methods. Among them are the online trace gas detection methods; these have attracted much interest in recent years. Laser-based infrared spectroscopy and proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry are the two most widely used methods, thanks to their high sensitivity at the single part per billion level and their response time of seconds. This paper starts with a short description of each method and presents performances within a wide variety of biological applications. Using these methods, the dynamics of trace gases for ethylene, nitric oxide and other VOCs released by plants under different conditions are recorded and analysed under natural conditions. In this way many hypotheses can be tested, revealing the role of the key elements in signalling and action mechanisms in plants.
Highlights
Reliable monitoring of small quantities of trace gases in complicated gas mixtures is of great importance for all research areas of life sciences
Trace gas monitoring plays an important role in many areas of life sciences ranging from agrotechnology, microbiology, molecular biology, physiology, and phytopathology
We found that 13C-methane concentrations in the cuvettes with plants were not significantly higher than those in control cuvettes without plants; the difference was close to the detection limit of the system
Summary
Reliable monitoring of small quantities of trace gases in complicated gas mixtures is of great importance for all research areas of life sciences. A short description of laser-based spectroscopic methods and sensitive mass spectrometry is given, with emphasis on why these approaches are so selective and sensitive for the detection of trace gases This brief technological approach is followed by a number of examples focused on specific applications and molecules related to plant physiological processes, such as ethylene, ethane, nitric oxide (NO), ethanol, acetaldehyde, etc. Using laser-based detection, it was found that ethane emission occurs from rice seedlings which were submerged for several days in the dark, indicating underwater membrane peroxidation and severely damaged tissue In these experiments, submergence-susceptible and -tolerant cultivars were compared, in which higher ethane emissions correlated with observed higher leaf damage and lower survival of the plants (Santosa et al 2007). Further analyses of plant enzymes involved in the breakdown of sulfur compounds is needed to reveal the origin of sulfur-containing VOCs from plants
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