Plant stem cells under low oxygen: metabolic rewiring by phytoglobin underlies stem cell functionality
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Root growth in maize (Zea mays L.) is regulated by the activity of the quiescent center (QC) stem cells located within the root apical meristem. Here, we show that despite being highly hypoxic under normal oxygen tension, QC stem cells are vulnerable to hypoxic stress, which causes their degradation with subsequent inhibition of root growth. Under low oxygen, QC stem cells became depleted of starch and soluble sugars and exhibited reliance on glycolytic fermentation with the impairment of the TCA cycle through the depressed activity of several enzymes, including pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH). This finding suggests that carbohydrate delivery from the shoot might be insufficient to meet the metabolic demand of QC stem cells during stress. Some metabolic changes characteristic of the hypoxic response in mature root cells were not observed in the QC. Hypoxia-responsive genes, such as PYRUVATE DECARBOXYLASE (PDC) and ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE (ADH), were not activated in response to hypoxia, despite an increase in ADH activity. Increases in phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) with little change in steady-state levels of succinate were also atypical responses to low-oxygen tensions. Overexpression of PHYTOGLOBIN 1 (ZmPgb1.1) preserved the functionality of the QC stem cells during stress. The QC stem cell preservation was underpinned by extensive metabolic rewiring centered around activation of the TCA cycle and retention of carbohydrate storage products, denoting a more efficient energy production and diminished demand for carbohydrates under conditions where nutrient transport may be limiting. Overall, this study provides an overview of metabolic responses occurring in plant stem cells during oxygen deficiency.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".