Wide genome transcription and metabolome profiles reprogrammed by sucrose under xenobiotic constraints

Plants have developed strategies to adapt quickly to environmental changes. However, the regulation of these adaptive responses and coordination of signals network remains poorly understood for many environmental constraints. Indeed, signalling molecules play a central role in environmental stimuli and may coordinate plants development under environmental cues. Sucrose is the major transport carbohydrate in higher plants, in addition to its metabolic role; recent investigations suggested that sucrose impact the plasticity of plant development by controlling gene expression. Sucrose was also suggested as a ROS scavenger and as a signalling molecule. In this paper we showed that sucrose mitigated phenanthrene induced stress. Since, exogenous sucrose allowed growth and chlorophyll accumulation in the presence of high phenanthrene concentrations, whereas Arabidopsis development was blocked and seedlings were unable to accumulate chlorophyll in the presence of phenanthrene solely. To decipher the earlier molecular changes involved in sucrose tolerance to phenanthrene, wide transcriptional genes analysis and targeted metabolic profiling were carried out. We showed that sucrose driving plant response was associated with a deep reconfiguration of both genes expression and metabolites accumulation during the first hours of treatment, suggesting that sucrose, allowed plants to sustain the primary metabolism and to overcome the phenanthrene induced injuries.