Plant Stress Physiology

Nicholas Smirnoff, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Published online: October 2014

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0001297.pub2

Abstract

Over the last few years there has been an explosion of information on responses to abiotic stresses in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana as well as crops such as rice. Much of the research has focussed on changes in gene transcription following stress imposition. The approach identifies potential ‘stress tolerance genes’ followed by assessment of their effects in mutants and genetically modified plants. Although this approach has produced plants that are apparently more stress resistant, evidence for translation to improved performance in the field has been very limited. Possible reasons include the use of unrealistic laboratory stress treatments and the use of plants that are not fully acclimatised to the variable and interacting environmental factors encountered in the field. Stress research is beginning to address this issue and more recent approaches are highlighting the importance of putting stress responses in the context of the control of plant growth by hormones, the initial perception of stress signals and in the context of understanding the physiological and metabolic adjustments that are needed for stress tolerance.

Key Concepts:

  • Transcriptome studies are revealing the details of signalling and transcriptional networks that are involved in plant responses to a wide range of environmental stresses. Epigenetic control over gene expression is also important in stress responses.

  • Stress resistance mechanisms are sometimes incompatible with growth and laboratory studies of stress often focus on extreme or rapidly developing stress. Since these conditions are not generally relevant to agriculture, the translatability of this research to crop improvement is limited.

  • New approaches in which the signalling mechanisms that restrain growth during mild stress (e.g. low temperature or water stress) are circumvented may be promising avenues for crop improvement.

  • The plant microbiome consists of bacteria and fungi associated with the rhizosphere and living within tissues (endophytes). The microbiome influences stress resistance. Manipulating its composition has promise in improving stress resistance.

Keywords: antioxidants; abscisic acid; water stress; cold stress; oxidative stress; microbiome; hypoxia; salinity; nutrient deficiency; epigenetic

Figure 1.

Publications related to plant stress responses. (a) Number of publication for Arabidopsis thaliana and selected crop plants in the period 2010–2013. (b) Number and proportion (% of all Arabidopsis publications) of stress‐related Arabidopsis thaliana publications between 1994 and 2013. Data were extracted from the Web of Science database.
Figure 2.

The key features involved in drought responses and tolerance of plants illustrated with a cereal plant during the phase of grain filling. To improve drought tolerance, changes in multiple traits are likely to be required and different traits may be important for dealing with drought during seedling, vegetative and reproductive stages. ABA, absciscic acid; ROS, reactive oxygen species.
Figure 3.

Comparison of the 100 genes most strongly induced by hydrogen peroxide in Arabidopsis thaliana with the response of the same genes to various abiotic stresses. Increased hydrogen peroxide was generated by using a catalase (cat2) mutant. The data are presented as a heatmap showing the extent of increased or decreased expression relative to controls. Genes are listed on the horizontal axis and stress conditions on the vertical axis. Hierarchical clustering analysis groups the genes and conditions that are most similar. Oxidative stresses cluster strongly together (orange box). The other stresses (see text for details) form a separate cluster that shows a tendency for a selection of hydrogen peroxide‐responsive genes to have higher expression. The analysis was carried out with the Genevestigator tool (Zimmermann et al., ).
close

References

Achard P, Gong F, Cheminant S et al. (2008) The cold‐inducible CBF1 factor‐dependent signaling pathway modulates the accumulation of the growth‐repressing DELLA proteins via its effect on gibberellin metabolism. Plant Cell 20: 2117–2129.

Atkinson NJ and Urwin PE (2012) The interaction of plant biotic and abiotic stresses: from genes to the field. Journal of Experimental Botany 63: 3523–3543.

Bechtold U, Albihlal WS, Lawson T et al. (2013) Arabidopsis HEAT SHOCK TRANSCRIPTION FACTORA1b overexpression enhances water productivity, resistance to drought, and infection. Journal of Experimental Botany 64: 3467–3481.

Bhaskara GB, Nguyen TT and Verslues PE (2012) Unique drought resistance functions of the highly ABA‐induced clade A protein phosphatase 2Cs. Plant Physiology 160: 379–395.

Castiglioni P, Warner D, Bensen RJ et al. (2008) Bacterial RNA chaperones confer abiotic stress tolerance in plants and improved grain yield in maize under water‐limited conditions. Plant Physiology 147: 446–455.

Claeys H and Inzé D (2013) The agony of choice: how plants balance growth and survival under water‐limiting conditions. Plant Physiology 162: 1768–1779.

Deikman J, Petracek M and Heard JE (2012) Drought tolerance through biotechnology: Improving translation from the laboratory to farmers' fields. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 23: 243–250.

Ding Y, Fromm M and Avramova Z (2012) Multiple exposures to drought ‘train' transcriptional responses in Arabidopsis. Nature Communications 3: 740.

Gamuyao R, Chin JH, Pariasca‐Tanaka J et al. (2012) The protein kinase Pstol1 from traditional rice confers tolerance of phosphorus deficiency. Nature 488: 535–539.

Gutzat R and Mittelsten Scheid O (2012) Epigenetic responses to stress: triple defense? Current Opinion in Plant Biology 15: 568–573.

Hu H and Xiong L (2014) Genetic engineering and breeding of drought‐resistant crops. Annual Review of Plant Biology 65: 715–741.

Hubbard M, Germida JJ and Vujanovic V (2014) Fungal endophytes enhance wheat heat and drought tolerance in terms of grain yield and second‐generation seed viability. Journal of Applied Microbiology 116: 109–122.

Kumar MN, Jane W-N and Verslues PE (2013) Role of the putative osmosensor Arabidopsis Histidine kinase1 in dehydration avoidance and low water potential response. Plant Physiology 161: 942–953.

Lisko KA, Torres R, Harris RS et al. (2013) Elevating vitamin C content via overexpression of myo‐inositol oxygenase and L‐gulono‐1,4‐lactone oxidase in Arabidopsis leads to enhanced biomass and tolerance to abiotic stresses. In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology – Plant 49: 643–655.

Molinier J, Ries G, Zipfel C and Hohn B (2006) Transgeneration memory of stress in plants. Nature 442: 1046–1049.

Oldroyd GE and Robatzek S (2011) The broad spectrum of plant associations with other organisms. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 14: 347–350.

Perrella G, Lopez‐Vernaza MA, Carr C et al. (2013) Histone deacetylase complex1 expression level titrates plant growth and abscisic acid sensitivity in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell 25: 3491–3505.

Pyl E‐T, Piques M, Ivakov A et al. (2012) Metabolism and growth in Arabidopsis depend on the daytime temperature but are temperature‐compensated against cool nights. Plant Cell 24: 2443–2469.

Rasmussen S, Barah P, Suarez‐Rodriguez MC et al. (2013) Transcriptome responses to combinations of stresses in Arabidopsis. Plant Physiology 161: 1783–1794.

Redman RS, Kim YO, Woodward CJDA et al. (2011) Increased fitness of rice plants to abiotic stress via habitat adapted symbiosis: A strategy for mitigating impacts of climate change. PLoS One 6: e14823–e14823.

Reguera M, Peleg Z, Abdel‐Tawab YM et al. (2013) Stress‐induced cytokinin synthesis increases drought tolerance through the coordinated regulation of carbon and nitrogen assimilation in rice. Plant Physiology 163: 1609–1622.

Roy SR, Negrao S and Tester M (2014) Salt resistant crop plants. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 26: 115–124.

Schroeder JI, Delhaize E, Frommer WB et al. (2013) Using membrane transporters to improve crops for sustainable food production. Nature 497: 60–66.

Sharma S, Villamor JG and Verslues PE (2011) Essential role of tissue‐specific proline synthesis and catabolism in growth and redox balance at low water potential. Plant Physiology 157: 292–304.

Skirycz A, Vandenbroucke K, Clauw P et al. (2011) Survival and growth of Arabidopsis plants given limited water are not equal. Nature Biotechnology 29: 212–214.

Smirnoff N (2011) Vitamin C: the metabolism and functions of ascorbic acid in plants. In: Rebeille F and Douce R (eds) Advances in Botanical Research, vol. 59B, pp. 109–179. London: Academic Press.

Song J, Angel A, Howard M and Dean C (2012) Vernalization – A cold‐induced epigenetic switch. Journal of Cell Science 125: 3723–3731.

Suzuki N, Miller G, Salazar C et al. (2013) Temporal‐spatial interaction between reactive oxygen species and abscisic acid regulates rapid systemic acclimation in plants. Plant Cell 25: 3553–3569.

de Torres Zabala M, Bennett MH, Truman WH and Grant MR (2009) Antagonism between salicylic and abscisic acid reflects early host‐pathogen conflict and moulds plant defence responses. Plant Journal 59: 375–386.

Urano K, Kurihara Y, Seki M and Shinozaki K (2010) ‘Omics’ analyses of regulatory networks in plant abiotic stress responses. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 13: 132–138.

Verslues PE, Lasky JR, Juenger TE, Liu T‐W and Kumar MN (2014) Genome wide association mapping combined with reverse genetics identifies new effectors of low water potential‐induced proline accumulation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant Physiology 164: 144–159.

Weiner JJ, Peterson FC, Volkman BF and Cutler SR (2010) Structural and functional insights into core ABA signaling. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 13: 495–502.

Xu K, Xu X, Fukao T et al. (2006) Sub1A is an ethylene‐response‐factor‐like gene that confers submergence tolerance to rice. Nature 442: 705–708.

Zimmermann P, Hirsch‐Hoffmann M, Hennig L and Gruissem W (2004) GENEVESTIGATOR. Arabidopsis microarray database and analysis toolbox. Plant Physiology 136: 2621–2632.

Further Reading

Battaglia M, Olvera‐Carrillo Y, Garciarrubio A, Campos F and Covarrubias AA (2008) The enigmatic LEA proteins and other hydrophilins. Plant Physiology 148: 6–24.

Crawford RMM (2008) Plants at the Margin. Ecological Limits and Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lawlor DW (2013) Genetic engineering to improve plant performance under drought: physiological evaluation of achievements, limitations, and possibilities. Journal of Experimental Botany 64: 83–108.

Miller G, Suzuki N, Ciftci‐Yilmaz S and Mittler R (2010) Reactive oxygen species homeostasis and signalling during drought and salinity stresses. Plant Cell and Environment 33: 453–467.

Peleg Z and Blumwald E (2011) Hormone balance and abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 14: 290–295.

Roy S, Tucker M and Tester M (2011) Genetic analysis of stress tolerance in crops. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 14: 232–239.

Tardieu F and Tuberosa R (2010) Dissection and modelling of abiotic stress tolerance in plants. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 13: 206–212.

Yang J, Kloepper JW and Ryu CM (2009) Rhizosphere bacteria help plants tolerate abiotic stress. Trends in Plant Science 14: 1–4.

de Zelicourt A, Al‐Yousif M and Hirt H (2013) Rhizosphere microbes as essential partners for plant stress tolerance. Molecular Plant 6: 242–245.

Related Sub-Topics:

Physiological Ecology | Plant Responses to the Environment | Plant Stress Physiology | Organisms and the Physical Environment
Contact Editor close
Submit a note to the editor about this article by filling in the form below.

* Required Field

Article Title: Plant Stress Physiology
 
How to Cite close
Smirnoff, Nicholas(Oct 2014) Plant Stress Physiology. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0001297.pub2]