An overview of hydrogen peroxide production and cellular determination in plants

Abstract EN

Recent advances in biochemical and genetic studies point to the steady-state production of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in plant tissues.

H2O2 was traditionally viewed as a harm-ful by-product of reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced during plant metabolism.

This view has, however, been changed by mounting evidence for its involvement in bi-otic and abiotic stress and its role in signal transduction in plants.

During stress, such as following pathogen infection and wounding, plants adjust their cellular metabolism and the redox (reduction/oxidation) status of the cell resulting in increased intercellular lev-els of H2O2.

Due to H2O2 toxicity, plants use antioxidants to keep its production under tight control and an abrupt increase in its levels results in a serious imbalance between H2O2 and antioxidant levels that eventually leads to cell death.

Increased interest in determining the redox status of stressed plants has led to the de-velopment of several methods for H2O2 detection.

Levels of H2O2 measured from a variety of plant species show a wide range (e.g., nM to mM) of H2O2 concentrations, a clear indication of technical difficulties in quantifying H2O2 levels.

In this brief review, several of the methods used to detect H2O2 levels are discussed, particularly those that.