Proteomic and physiological insights into drought mitigation by exogenously applied calcium nanoparticles in Brassica napus

作者：Ahsan Ayyaz, Iram Batool, Mingchao Xu, Ying Li, Tongjun Qin, Fakhir Hannan, Muhammad Ahsan Farooq, Weijun Zhou, Yanhui Wang, Ling Xu · 发表于：Plant Stress · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.stress.2025.101179 · 被引用次数：2 · 研究领域：Plant Stress Responses and Tolerance、Nanoparticles: synthesis and applications、Carbon and Quantum Dots Applications

Drought stress poses a significant threat to rapeseed ( Brassica napus ) productivity. This study investigates the efficacy of calcium nanoparticles (Ca-NPs) in mitigating drought stress, with a specific focus on the proteomic reprogramming that underlies this resilience. Physiological assessments confirmed that Ca-NP application restored plant growth and biomass under drought conditions, correlating with enhanced photosynthetic efficiency and a potentiated antioxidant response. A pivotal and novel finding, revealed through non-invasive micro-test technology (NMT), was that Ca-NPs prevented drought-induced pathological leakage of cellular Ca²⁺, thereby stabilizing membrane integrity and suggesting a primed state for stress signaling. Quantitative proteomic analysis (TMT-based) identified significant alterations in the abundance of key proteins involved in central metabolic processes. Specifically, Ca-NPs upregulated proteins associated with carbon fixation, porphyrin and chlorophyll metabolism, and the glutathione-mediated antioxidant pathway, providing the first comprehensive proteomic evidence of a reconfiguration of primary and defensive metabolism in rapeseed under Ca-NP treatment. Furthermore, weighted protein co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) identified highly connected hub proteins within modules strongly correlated with improved physiological traits, pinpointing critical functional components of the drought response. These findings demonstrate that Ca-NPs do not ...