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The Molecular Basis of the Cellular Memory of Abiotic Stress

Reference	BBS/E/J/000CA400
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Isabel Baurle
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors	Professor Andrew Maule
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	2,550
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/10/2009
End date	31/08/2010
Duration	11 months

Abstract

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. There are numerous indications that plants remember past exposure to abiotic stress, such that development or responses to repeated stress are modified; however, the underlying molecular mechanisms are essentially unknown. This project proposes to unravel the molecular mechanism of the maintenance of acquired thermotolerance (aTT) as a model case of stress memory in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis seedlings acquire thermotolerance through a heat treatment at sublethal temperatures. This thermotolerance is actively maintained for several days as indicated by the behaviour of mutants that fail to maintain aTT, although they are perfectly able to establish it. To investigate the underlying mechanisms, the hypothesis will be tested that known chromatin-regulatory pathways are involved in this process. An unbiased genetic analysis of the memory of aTT will be performed. Taken together, this research project will provide insights into the basic research question of how plants achieve a cellular memory without a nervous system, and the economically important question of how plants adapt to abiotic stress, providing new approaches for crop improvement.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Plant Science
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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