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United we stand: Plants that physically touch each other are more resilient to stress.

ABSTRACT: Plants use sophisticated signaling networks to communicate with each other. These are thought to support the overall health and resilience of plant communities, but could also reflect eavesdropping between plants, used for competition. Here we reveal that plants that physically touch each other aboveground are more resilient to stress, and that this phenomenon is dependent on the ability of plants to exchange systemic electric, calcium, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) signals between them. We further separate electric- from calcium/ROS plant-to-plant systemic signals and show that the function of certain calcium/ROS-dependent transcripts is required for stress acclimation. Our study reveals that plants living in a community can support each other, enhancing the overall resilience of the community to stress.

ORGANISM(S): Arabidopsis thaliana

PROVIDER: GSE301070 | GEO | 2026/06/26

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Background: Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are toxic, widely-distributed, environmentally persistent, and carcinogenic byproducts of carbon-based fuel combustion. Previously, plant studies have shown that PAHs induce oxidative stress, reduce growth, and cause leaf deformation as well as tissue necrosis. To understand the transcriptional changes that occur during these processes, we performed microarray experiments on Arabidopsis thaliana L. under phenanthrene treatment, and compared the results to published Arabidopsis microarray data representing a variety of stress and hormone treatments. In addition, to probe hormonal aspects of PAH stress, we assayed transgenic ethylene-inducible reporter plants as well as ethylene pathway mutants under phenanthrene treatment. Results: Microarray results revealed numerous perturbations in signaling and metabolic pathways that regulate reactive oxygen species (ROS) and responses related to pathogen defense. A number of glutathione S-transferases that may tag xenobiotics for transport to the vacuole were upregulated. Comparative microarray analyses indicated that the phenanthrene response was closely related to other ROS conditions, including pathogen defense conditions. The ethylene-inducible transgenic reporters were activated by phenanthrene. Mutant experiments showed that PAH inhibits growth through an ethylene-independent pathway, as PAH-treated ethylene-insensitive etr1-4 mutants exhibited a greater growth reduction than WT. Further, phenanthrene-treated, constitutive ethylene signaling mutants had longer roots than the untreated control plants, indicating that the PAH inhibits parts of the ethylene signaling pathway. Conclusions: This study identified major physiological systems that participate in the PAH-induced stress response in Arabidopsis. At the transcriptional level, the results identify specific gene targets that will be valuable in finding lead compounds and engineering increased tolerance. Collectively, the results open a number of new avenues for researching and improving plant resilience and PAH phytoremediation. Arabidopsis thaliana (ecotype Columbia) plants were long-day grown with +/- 0.25 mM phenanthrene in sterile plates at 23C for 21d before harvest. At least 20 plants were pooled prior to each mRNA extraction.

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United we stand: Plants that physically touch each other are more resilient to stress.

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