Elevated methionine in plants: the effect on development, stress responses, epigenetics, and nutritional biofortification.

Elevating methionine levels in plants alters development, stress responses, and epigenetic regulation, but is constrained by the plant’s metabolic control mechanisms.

• Why it matters: Understanding how plants regulate methionine is crucial for improving crop nutritional value and stress resilience, addressing limitations in biofortification efforts.
• What they did: The review synthesizes evidence from genetic and metabolic studies, showing that despite high flux through the Met/SAM pathway, Met pools stay low, and increasing Met impacts growth, metabolism, and epigenetics.
• The result: Findings reveal that plants restrict Met to maintain metabolic and epigenetic balance, which complicates biofortification strategies but offers insights into optimizing nutritional and stress-tolerance traits.