Project description:Abiotic stress is a major factor for crop productivity, a problem likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Improving the tolerance to environmental stress is one of the most important goals of crop breeding programmes. While the early responses to abiotic stress in plants are well studied, plant adaptation to enduring or recurring stress conditions has received little attention. This project investigates the molecular mechanism of the maintenance of acquired thermotolerance as a model case of stress memory in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis seedlings acquire thermotolerance through a heat treatment at sublethal temperatures. To investigate the underlying mechanisms, we are investigating changes in the transcriptome at two timepoints after a heat acclimation treatment using Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. Microarrays were used to compare gene expression at two timepoints after a heat acclimation treatment.
Project description:Plants can be primed by a stress cue to mount a faster and stronger activation of defense mechanisms upon a subsequent stress. A crucial component of such stress priming is the modified reactivation of genes upon recurring stress, a phenomenon known as transcriptional memory. The transcriptional memory in response to heat stress is not clear at the genome scale. We used microarrays to identify genes that showed transcriptional memory in response to recurring heat stress.
Project description:Adaptive plasticity in stress responses is a key element of plant survival strategies. For instance, moderate heat stress (HS) primes a plant to acquire thermotolerance, which allows subsequent survival of more severe HS conditions. Acquired thermotolerance is actively maintained over several days (HS memory) and involves the sustained induction of memory-related genes. We find FORGETTER3/ HEAT SHOCK TRANSCRIPTION FACTOR A3 (FGT3/HSFA3) to be specifically required for physiological HS memory and maintaining high memory-gene expression during the days following a HS exposure. HSFA3 mediates HS memory by direct transcriptional activation of memory-related genes after return to normal growth temperatures. HSFA3 binds HSFA2, and in vivo both proteins form heteromeric complexes with additional HSFs. Our results indicate that only complexes containing both HSFA2 and HSFA3 efficiently promote transcriptional memory by promoting histone H3 lysine 4 (H3K4) hyper-methylation. In summary, our work defines the major HSF complex controlling transcriptional memory and elucidates the in vivo dynamics of HSF complexes during somatic stress memory.
Project description:Climate change requires optimizing stress responses in crops. Priming and memory of heat stress (HS) allow plants to improve their tolerance against high temperatures. Here, we investigate HS memory in cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare) to assess whether the mechanisms underlying priming by and memory of HS are conserved between dicots and monocots. Mutation of the barley orthologs of two key transcriptional regulators of HS memory, HvHSFA2 and HvHSFA3, reduced HS memory. This correlated with altered transcriptional responses of heat-induced genes in the mutants after recurrent HS. Conversely, overexpression of HvHSFA2 increases HS tolerance with no penalty on productivity. While the biological role of HSFA2 and HSFA3 is conserved, their mechanistic functions appear to have diverged, as we did not find evidence that HvHSFA2 is involved in H3K4me-mediated priming. Instead, both factors are globally required to boost induction of HS-responsive genes after recurrent HS. In summary, while barley HS memory depends on the highly conserved HvHSFA2 and HvHSFA3, the underlying transcriptional wiring is different. Our findings provide a tangible route to improve HS tolerance in temperate cereals.
Project description:Heat stress is a common stress for plants. Long heat stress can triger a series of biological responses. RNA-seq is a useful method to profile RNA dynamics in creatures. Here we profiles the RNA dynamics in heat stressed Arabidopsis. These data will help us understanding the stress response mechanism in plants.
Project description:Climate change requires optimizing stress responses in crops. Priming and memory of heat stress (HS) allow plants to improve their tolerance against high temperatures. Here, we investigate HS memory in cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare) to assess whether the mechanisms underlying priming by and memory of HS are conserved between dicots and monocots. Mutation of the barley orthologs of two key transcriptional regulators of HS memory, HvHSFA2 and HvHSFA3, reduced HS memory. This correlated with altered transcriptional responses of heat-induced genes in the mutants after recurrent HS. Conversely, overexpression of HvHSFA2 increases HS tolerance with no penalty on productivity. While the biological role of HSFA2 and HSFA3 is conserved, their mechanistic functions appear to have diverged, as we did not find evidence that HvHSFA2 is involved in H3K4me-mediated priming. Instead, both factors are globally required to boost induction of HS-responsive genes after recurrent HS. In summary, while barley HS memory depends on the highly conserved HvHSFA2 and HvHSFA3, the underlying transcriptional wiring is different. Our findings provide a tangible route to improve HS tolerance in temperate cereals.
Project description:Plants as sessile organisms can adapt to environmental stress to mitigate its adverse effects. As part of such adaptation they maintain an active memory of heat stress for several days that mediates a more efficient response to recurring stress. We identified a mutant that is specifically affected in this heat stress memory. The forgetter1 (frg1) mutant is defective in the Arabidopsis orthologue of Strawberry notch and displays reduced maintenance of heat-induced gene expression. FRG1 globally associates with the promoter region of actively expressed genes in a heat-dependent fashion. FRG1 interacts with chromatin remodelers of the SWI/SNF and ISWI families, which also display reduced heat stress memory. Accordingly, nucleosome dynamics at loci with altered maintenance of heat-induced expression are affected in frg1. Thus, FRG1 is required to sustain a transcription-competent chromatin environment by nucleosome positioning. Our findings suggest a mechanism for the highly conserved Strawberry notch proteins in development and pathologies.