Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid promotes the accumulation of nitric oxide

Abstract Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) is a well-established chelating agent used in industry, agriculture, food, and medicine. However, the analysis of an EDTA-sensitive Arabidopsis thaliana mutant revealed that EDTA can significantly promote nitric oxide (NO) accumulation, indicating that EDTA has unexpected biological functions beyond its chelating activity. This finding challenges our current understanding about the effects of EDTA on biological systems. One Sentence Summary An analysis of ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA)-sensitive mutants suggests that EDTA can promote the accumulation of nitric oxide.