Nitrate transport and assimilation in plants: a potential review

ABSTRACT

Nitrogen (N) plays a key role for plant life cycle. It is available in agricultural soils as the form of nitrate and ammonium (NH₄⁺) where nitrate (NO₃⁻) is a major nutrient. Plants are able to sense NO₃⁻ in their environment, allowing them to quickly respond to the dramatic fluctuations of its availability. As a main feature of plant autotrophy, assimilation of inorganic N is not only of fundamental interest to the crop, but also a crucial factor in crop productivity. Furthermore, over the last couple of years, N sensing has been shown to be affected by different external factors, which act as local signals to trigger systemic signaling coordinated by mobile signals in plants body. During recent years, a breakthrough arising from the improved knowledge is a better understanding of NO₃⁻ integration and hormone signaling pathways of plants that explains the extraordinary developmental plasticity of NO₃⁻ response. This review highlights the novel aspect of N responsive sensors, transporters, and signaling molecules in plants with a brief introduction on the metabolic pathways and discusses their potential roles in N sensing.

KEYWORDS:

• Plant
• nitrate
• transporters
• assimilation
• signaling

Disclosure statement

The author declare that there were no conflicts of interest of this study.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for financial support from the Research and Training Center (RTC) (Grants code: 4829) at Patuakhali Science and Technology University (PSTU), Dumki, Patuakhali-8602, Bangladesh and also for Research Collaboration Fund provided by the University Grants Commission (UGC), Bangladesh.