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Advances in “Omics” Approaches for Improving Toxic Metals/Metalloids Tolerance in Plants
Open accessAbstract
Food safety has emerged as a high-urgency matter for sustainable agricultural production. Toxic metal contamination of soil and water significantly affects agricultural productivity, which is further aggravated by extreme anthropogenic activities and modern agricultural practices, leaving food safety and human health at risk. In addition to reducing crop production, increased metals/metalloids toxicity also disturbs plants' demand and supply equilibrium. Counterbalancing toxic metals/metalloids toxicity demands a better understanding of the complex mechanisms at physiological, biochemical, molecular, cellular, and plant level that may result in increased crop productivity. Consequently, plants have established different internal defense mechanisms to cope with the adverse effects of toxic metals/metalloids. Nevertheless, these internal defense mechanisms are not adequate to overwhelm the metals/metalloids toxicity. Plants produce several secondary messengers to trigger cell signaling, activating the numerous transcriptional responses correlated with plant defense. Therefore, the recent advances in omics approaches such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, ionomics, miRNAomics, and phenomics have enabled the characterization of molecular regulators associated with toxic metal tolerance, which can be deployed for developing toxic metal tolerant plants. This review highlights various response strategies adopted by plants to tolerate toxic metals/metalloids toxicity, including physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses. A seven-(omics)-based design is summarized with scientific clues to reveal the stress-responsive genes, proteins, metabolites, miRNAs, trace elements, stress-inducible phenotypes, and metabolic pathways that could potentially help plants to cope up with metals/metalloids toxicity in the face of fluctuating environmental conditions. Finally, some bottlenecks and future directions have also been highlighted, which could enable sustainable agricultural production.
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“While HMs are essential to plants, substantially, there are non-essential HMs like chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), etc. induce devastating negative impacts on plant growth, culminating in poor crop production and toxicity to human health (Varma, 2021; Lone and Gaffar, 2021; Varma, 2021; Raza et al., 2022; Bhat et al., 2023).”
From Plant hyperaccumulators: a state-of-the-art review on mechanism of heavy metal transport and sequestration (2025) · cites this paper as Raza et al., 2022
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“Phytotoxic effects of HMs include damage to various physiological and metabolic networks at the cellular and molecular levels (Raza et al., 2022; Bhardwaj et al., 2023).”
From Plant hyperaccumulators: a state-of-the-art review on mechanism of heavy metal transport and sequestration (2025) · cites this paper as Raza et al., 2022
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1 retracted
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Cited by
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Raza, A., Salehi, H., Rahman, M. A., Zahid, Z., Haghjou, M. M., Kakavand, S. N., Charagh, S., Osman, H. S., Albaqami, M., Zhuang, Y., et al. (2022) · Frontiers in Plant Science · doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.961872 · Cited by 319
Self-citationSmart reprograming of plants against salinity stress using modern biotechnological tools
Raza, A., Tabassum, J., Fakhar, A. Z., Sharif, R., Chen, H., Zhang, C., Ju, L., Fotopoulos, V., Siddique, K. H. M., Singh, R. K., et al. (2022) · Critical Reviews in Biotechnology · doi:10.1080/07388551.2022.2093695 · Cited by 259
Self-citationAnalysis of Heavy Metal Impacts on Cereal Crop Growth and Development in Contaminated Soils
Vasilachi, I. C., Stoleru, V., & Gavrilescu, M. (2023) · Agriculture · doi:10.3390/agriculture13101983 · Cited by 210
Multidimensional role of silicon to activate resilient plant growth and to mitigate abiotic stress
Mir, R. A., Bhat, B. A., Yousuf, H., Islam, S. T., Raza, A., Rizvi, M. A., Charagh, S., Albaqami, M., Sofi, P. A., & Zargar, S. M. (2022) · Frontiers in Plant Science · doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.819658 · Cited by 178
Self-citationMulti-omics revolution to promote plant breeding efficiency
Mahmood, U., Li, X., Fan, Y., Chang, W., Niu, Y., Li, J., Qu, C., & Lu, K. (2022) · Frontiers in Plant Science · doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.1062952 · Cited by 145
Metadata
- Authors
- Raza, A., Tabassum, J., Zahid, Z., Charagh, S., Bashir, S., Barmukh, R., Khan, R. S. A., Barbosa, F., Zhang, C., Chen, H., Zhuang, W., & Varshney, R. K.
- Affiliations
- Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University (CN)
- Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CN)
- National University of Sciences and Technology (PK)
- International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (IN)
- University of Agriculture Faisalabad (PK)
- Universidade de São Paulo (BR)
- Murdoch University (AU)
- Corresponding author
- Zhuang, Weijian
- Varshney, Rajeev K.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Frontiers in Plant Science
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2022-01-04
- Volume
- 12
- Pages
- 794373-794373
- ISSN
- 1664-462X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8764127
- OpenAlex
- W4206241292
- Cited by
- 132
- References
- 261
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 24 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 22
- FWCI
- 2.29
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Plant Science (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Open Access Repository of ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics) (acceptedVersion)
- Murdoch University Research Portal (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Murdoch University Research Portal (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1114827)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Plant Stress Responses and Tolerance
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Plant Science › Plant Micronutrient Interactions and Effects
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Heavy metals in environment
- Keywords
- metalloids, heavy metal toxicity, plant stress response, omics approaches, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, ionomics, phenomics, plant defense, stress-inducible genes, food safety, soil and water contamination
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