Isoprene emission by plants in polluted environments

ABSTRACT

In recent years, anthropogenic activities and climate change have significantly increased exposure of plants to environmental stresses (single or multiple) and pollutants, which negatively affect plant growth, survival, and productivity. Plants may activate an armament of defenses against such environmental stresses. Isoprene, the most abundant biogenic volatile organic compound emitted by plants, is supposed to induce stress tolerance directly, by quenching reactive oxygen species, or indirectly by strengthening photosynthetic membranes and reprogramming expression of genes that are involved in antioxidant defense mechanisms. On the other hand, isoprene is also involved in tropospheric chemistry that contributes to the production of air pollutants when mixing with anthropogenic gases. In this review, we summarized current knowledge about the impact of air and soil pollutants on isoprene emission from plants, focusing on possible feedback and feedforward mechanisms that may affect whole ecosystem functioning and evolution of plant species. Despite limited available information, especially about long-term effects of soil pollutants, it may be speculated that isoprene generally improves fitness of plants challenged by air and soil pollutants, and their interaction with other organisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Isoprene emission
• biogenic volatile organic compounds
• plant–environment interaction
• air pollution
• belowground communications
• soil pollution

Acknowledgements

M.B is grateful to ‘The Company of Biologists’ for providing the traveling fellowship award (www.biologists.com) and BioRender.com for the creation and editing of the images. Author contribution: Conceptualization: Manuel Bellucci and Francesco Loreto; Writing original-draft preparation: Manuel Bellucci and Francesco Loreto; Writing review and editing: Manuel Bellucci, Laura De Gara, Vittoria Locato, Francesco Loreto, and Thomas D. Sharkey Funding acquisition: Laura De Gara and Francesco Loreto Supervision: Laura De Gara, Vittoria Locato, Francesco Loreto, and Thomas D. Sharkey. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Project PRIN 2017 by the Italian Ministry of University and Research): ‘Plant multitROphic interactions for bioinspired Strategies of PEst ConTrol (PROSPECT)’; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) fellowship to Manuel Bellucci and by ‘The Company of Biologists’ Travel Fellowship award number DEVTF2210892. Funding at Michigan State University was from the U.S. National Science Foundation, award number IOS-2022495. Michigan AgBioResearch provided partial salary support for Thomas D. Sharkey.

Notes on contributors

Manuel Bellucci

Manuel Bellucci is a PhD student of ‘Science and engineering for the Human and the environment’ at Department of Science and Technology for Sustainable Development and One Health of the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, in collaboration with the Department of Biology of the National Research Council (CNR) of Italy and Edmund Mach Foundation. His main activities cover: (i) stress resistance and response of plants against abiotic stresses and (ii) biosynthesis, emission, and activities of isoprenoids in plants.

Vittoria Locato

Vittoria Locato is Associate Professor of Plant Physiology at Campus Bio-Medico (CBM) University of Rome from 2018. She has obtained a Master Degree in Biological Sciences cum laude (2003) and a Doctorate in Physiology and Cell Biotechnology (2008) from University of Bari. Her main research interests cover: redox signaling in plant responses to environmental stress; identification of tolerance traits in crop; plant biotechnology applied to the production of ‘bioactive’ molecules derived from plant cells.

Thomas D. Sharkey

Thomas D. (Tom) Sharkey is a University Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and is a member of the Michigan State University/US Department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory. The two main interests in his lab are carbon metabolism of photosynthesis and isoprene emission and signaling in plants. A major aspect of his research is studying how these processes will be affected by climate change, both the temperature changes and carbon dioxide changes that are occurring.

Laura De Gara

Laura De Gara is Full Professor of Plant Physiology at the Department of Science and Technology for Sustainability and One Health of the Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma. Her main scientific interests cover: (i) stress physiology, with particular attention to climate change-related stress and to redox homeostasis and ROS-dependent signaling and (ii) metabolism of bioactive molecules in plants.

Francesco Loreto

Francesco Loreto is Full Professor of Plant Physiology at the Department of Biology of the University of Naples Federico II and a Research Associate at the National Research Council of Italy (CNR), Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection (IPSP). Prof. Loreto main interests cover: (i) stress physiology, especially the study of the effect of biotic and abiotic stresses on photosynthesis limitations and plant productivity. (ii) Biosynthesis, emission, and functional roles of biogenic volatile organic compounds.