Plants take up essential nutrients from the soil and in the process absorb substances released by soil microorganisms such as antibiotics. It is expected that the natural propensity of organisms to fight off unwanted influences drives plants to develop resistance against these antibiotics. One well known example of this phenomenon is observed in Arabidopsis thaliana plants, which possess the Atwbc19 gene that confers resistance to the antibiotic kanamycin. Atwbc19 mutants are very sensitive to kanamycin and their Zn uptake is compromised under normal conditions. In addition, Fe uptake in control plants declines when they are exposed to kanamycin. These preliminary findings suggested a link between antibiotics and metal uptake. Here, we propose and experimentally validate a model that explains the connection between metal uptake and antibiotic resistance.The metal transporter IREG1 allows Fe transport into the xylem, and is shut down in the presence of kanamycin. Atwbc19 on the other hand transports Zn-NA and serves as an alternate route for Fe transport during kanamycin exposure, as Fe-NA. The VCell software was used to capture and test our model. After estimating parameters using a subset of data, the resulting VCell model predicted experimental results well.
