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Scrutinizing the interaction between metribuzin with glutathione reductase 2 from Arabidopsis thaliana: insight into the molecular toxicity in agriculture

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Abstract

As one of the triazine herbicides with widespread usage in agriculture, metribuzin exerted nonnegligible hazardous effects on plants via excessive accumulation of reactive oxygen species and destruction of antioxidant enzymes, but the underlying harmful mechanism of metribuzin-induced oxidative damage to plants has never been exploited. Here, Arabidopsis thaliana glutathione reductase 2 (AtGR2) was employed as the biomarker to evaluate the adverse impacts of metribuzin on plants. The fluorescence intensity of AtGR2 was decreased based on the static quenching mechanism with the prediction of a single binding site toward metribuzin, and the complex formation was presumed to be mainly impelled by hydrogen bonding and van der Waals forces from the negative ΔH and ΔS. In addition, the loosened and unfolded skeleton of AtGR2 along with the increased hydrophilicity around the tryptophan residues were investigated. Besides, the glutathione reductase activity of AtGR2 was also destroyed due to structural and conformational changes. At last, the severe inhibiting growth of Arabidopsis seedling roots was discovered under metribuzin exposure. Hence, the evaluation of the molecular interaction mechanism of AtGR2 with metribuzin will establish valuable assessments of the toxic effects of metribuzin on plants.

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Funding

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32170172) and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong province (ZR2020MC052).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shandong Province Key Laboratory of Applied Mycology, College of Life Sciences, Qingdao Agricultural University, Qingdao, 266109, China

    Dongmei Xiang, Lin Zhu, Song Yang & Xiaomin Hou

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  1. Dongmei Xiang
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  2. Lin Zhu
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  3. Song Yang
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  4. Xiaomin Hou
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Contributions

Material preparation was carried out by Dongmei Xiang and Lin Zhu. Data collection was performed by Dongmei Xiang. Experiment design and data analysis were performed by Xiaomin Hou and Song Yang. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Dongmei Xiang and Xiaomin Hou. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiaomin Hou.

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Supplementary information

The molecular structure of metribuzin.

Fig. S1

The structure of metribuzin (PNG 6 kb)

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Xiang, D., Zhu, L., Yang, S. et al. Scrutinizing the interaction between metribuzin with glutathione reductase 2 from Arabidopsis thaliana: insight into the molecular toxicity in agriculture. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 11936–11945 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22808-0

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