sulfur-metabolism
Sulfur metabolism encompasses the biological processes by which plants acquire, reduce, and incorporate sulfur into essential biomolecules such as amino acids, coenzymes, and secondary metabolites. Because sulfur is a critical macronutrient required for protein synthesis and stress responses, understanding how plants regulate its uptake and assimilation is key to improving crop nutrition, resilience, and the production of health-promoting compounds like glucosinolates.
open_in_new WikipediaPubMed · 2026-04-15
Plants use sulfur to build a suite of powerful molecules — including a gas, an antioxidant, and defense compounds — that work together to help plants grow and survive stress. This review maps out how these molecules interact with each other and with plant hormones, offering a roadmap for breeding more resilient crops.
Plants produce at least four major sulfur-containing compound classes — hydrogen sulfide gas, the amino acid cysteine, the antioxidant glutathione, and glucosinolates (the pungent compounds in mustard family plants) — all linked through shared biosynthetic pathways.
Hydrogen sulfide acts as a signaling gas that directly interacts with cysteine, glutathione, and glucosinolates, forming a crosstalk network that fine-tunes plant responses to oxidative stress and environmental stimuli.
These sulfur metabolites interface with plant hormones and growth regulators to coordinate both normal development and stress adaptation, suggesting that manipulating sulfur metabolism could simultaneously improve crop yield, stress tolerance, and nutritional quality.
