Comparative Proteomics of Thellungiella halophila Leaves from Plants Subjected to Salinity Reveals the Importance of Chloroplastic Starch and Soluble Sugars

Thellungiella halophila, a close relative of Arabidopsis, is a model halophyte used to study plant salt tolerance. The proteomic/physiological/transcriptomic analyses of Thel-lungiella plant leaves subjected to different salinity levels, reported herein, indicate an extraordinary ability of Thel-lungiella to adapt to large concentrations of exogenous saline by compartmentalizing Na into cell vacuoles and accumulating proline and soluble sugars as organic os-molytes. Salinity stress stimulated the accumulation of starch in chloroplasts, which resulted in a greatly in-creased content of starch and total sugars in leaves. Comparative proteomics of Thellungiella leaves identified 209 salt-responsive proteins. Among these, the se-quences of 108 proteins were strongly homologous to Arabidopsis protein sequences, and 30 had previousl