Understanding heavy metal tolerance mechanism in sorghum using proteomics technique

Many abiotic stresses directly or indirectly affect agricultural crops drastically. Among the abiotic stresses, heavy metals (HM) such as cadmium (Cd), and copper (Cu) are thought to be the most detrimental not only reducing plant growth and development but also deteriorating the quality of food. Cropping of S. bicolor plants facilitated by agronomic practices may be a sustainable technique for partial decontamination of heavy metal contaminated soils. Heavy metals at toxic levels have the capability to interact with several vital cellular biomolecules such as nuclear proteins and DNA, leading to oxidative stress in plants. Proteomics deals with the study of the large-scale expression of proteins in an organism encoded by its genome. Although genomic analysis has enhanced our understanding regarding plants response to heavy metal toxicity, transcriptomic changes in the genome are not always reflected at the protein level. Recently, the molecular mechanism for plant interaction with heavy metals has attained considerable interest in the field of metalloproteomic studies.