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      Giving drought the cold shoulder: a relationship between drought tolerance and fall dormancy in an agriculturally important crop

      research-article
      1 , * , 2
      AoB Plants
      Oxford University Press
      Alfalfa, forage legumes, gene expression, lucerne, moisture stress.

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          Abstract

          Fall dormant/freezing tolerant plants often also exhibit superior tolerance to drought conditions compared to their non-fall dormant/freezing intolerant counterparts. This experiment aimed to investigate this phenomenon in an agriculturally important crop. Seven alfalfa cultivars with varying levels of fall dormancy/freezing tolerance were exposed to a water deficit. The more fall dormant cultivars had superior tolerance to a mild water deficit. Two genes, CAS18 (encodes for a dehydrin like protein) and CorF (encodes for a galactinol synthase), were up regulated in association with this drought tolerance. Both these genes are early response genes, providing clues to the stress signalling pathways involved.

          Abstract

          The growth of fall dormant/freezing tolerant plants often surpasses the growth of non-fall dormant/non-freezing tolerant types of the same species under water-limited conditions, while under irrigated conditions non-fall dormant types exhibit superior yield performance. To investigate the mechanism behind this phenomenon, we exposed seven diverse alfalfa ( Medicago sativa) cultivars to water-limited and fully watered conditions and measured their shoot growth, shoot water potential and gas exchange parameters and the relative abundance of taproot RNA transcripts associated with chilling stress/freezing tolerance. Fall dormant cultivars had greater shoot growth relative to the fully watered controls under a mild water deficit (a cumulative water deficit of 625 mL pot −1) and did not close their stomata until lower shoot water potentials compared with the more non-fall dormant cultivars. Several gene transcripts previously associated with freezing tolerance increased in abundance when plants were exposed to a mild water deficit. Two transcripts, corF (encodes galactinol synthase) and cas18 (encodes a dehydrin-like protein), increased in abundance in fall dormant cultivars only. Once water deficit stress became severe (a cumulative water deficit of 2530 mL pot −1), the difference between fall dormancy groups disappeared with the exception of the expression of a type 1 sucrose synthase gene, which decreased in fall dormant cultivars. The specific adaptation of fall dormant cultivars to mild water deficit conditions and the increase in abundance of specific genes typically associated with freezing tolerance in these cultivars is further evidence of a link between freezing tolerance/fall dormancy and adaption to drought conditions in this species.

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          When defense pathways collide. The response of Arabidopsis to a combination of drought and heat stress.

          Within their natural habitat, plants are subjected to a combination of abiotic conditions that include stresses such as drought and heat. Drought and heat stress have been extensively studied; however, little is known about how their combination impacts plants. The response of Arabidopsis plants to a combination of drought and heat stress was found to be distinct from that of plants subjected to drought or heat stress. Transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis plants subjected to a combination of drought and heat stress revealed a new pattern of defense response in plants that includes a partial combination of two multigene defense pathways (i.e. drought and heat stress), as well as 454 transcripts that are specifically expressed in plants during a combination of drought and heat stress. Metabolic profiling of plants subjected to drought, heat stress, or a combination of drought and heat stress revealed that plants subject to a combination of drought and heat stress accumulated sucrose and other sugars such as maltose and glucose. In contrast, Pro that accumulated in plants subjected to drought did not accumulate in plants during a combination of drought and heat stress. Heat stress was found to ameliorate the toxicity of Pro to cells, suggesting that during a combination of drought and heat stress sucrose replaces Pro in plants as the major osmoprotectant. Our results highlight the plasticity of the plant genome and demonstrate its ability to respond to complex environmental conditions that occur in the field.
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            OligoCalc: an online oligonucleotide properties calculator

            We developed OligoCalc as a web-accessible, client-based computational engine for reporting DNA and RNA single-stranded and double-stranded properties, including molecular weight, solution concentration, melting temperature, estimated absorbance coefficients, inter-molecular self-complementarity estimation and intra-molecular hairpin loop formation. OligoCalc has a familiar ‘calculator’ look and feel, making it readily understandable and usable. OligoCalc incorporates three common methods for calculating oligonucleotide-melting temperatures, including a nearest-neighbor thermodynamic model for melting temperature. Since it first came online in 1997, there have been more than 900 000 accesses of OligoCalc from nearly 200 000 distinct hosts, excluding search engines. OligoCalc is available at http://basic.northwestern.edu/biotools/OligoCalc.html, with links to the full source code, usage patterns and statistics at that link as well.
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              Exploring the temperature-stress metabolome of Arabidopsis.

              Metabolic profiling analyses were performed to determine metabolite temporal dynamics associated with the induction of acquired thermotolerance in response to heat shock and acquired freezing tolerance in response to cold shock. Low-M(r) polar metabolite analyses were performed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Eighty-one identified metabolites and 416 unidentified mass spectral tags, characterized by retention time indices and specific mass fragments, were monitored. Cold shock influenced metabolism far more profoundly than heat shock. The steady-state pool sizes of 143 and 311 metabolites or mass spectral tags were altered in response to heat and cold shock, respectively. Comparison of heat- and cold-shock response patterns revealed that the majority of heat-shock responses were shared with cold-shock responses, a previously unknown relationship. Coordinate increases in the pool sizes of amino acids derived from pyruvate and oxaloacetate, polyamine precursors, and compatible solutes were observed during both heat and cold shock. In addition, many of the metabolites that showed increases in response to both heat and cold shock in this study were previously unlinked with temperature stress. This investigation provides new insight into the mechanisms of plant adaptation to thermal stress at the metabolite level, reveals relationships between heat- and cold-shock responses, and highlights the roles of known signaling molecules and protectants.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                AoB Plants
                AoB Plants
                aobpla
                aobpla
                AoB Plants
                Oxford University Press
                2041-2851
                2014
                16 April 2014
                : 6
                : plu012
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture , University of Tasmania , PO Box 3523, Burnie, TAS 7320, Australia
                [2 ]Pastoral Genomics, c/o ViaLactia (NZ) Ltd , PO Box 109185, Newmarket 1149, New Zealand
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author's e-mail address: Keith.Pembleton@ 123456utas.edu.au
                Article
                plu012
                10.1093/aobpla/plu012
                4038438
                24790133
                8b42cdbe-e5a7-42bf-ac45-40ea35c80dd4
                Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company.

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 30 January 2014
                : 13 March 2014
                Page count
                Pages: 17
                Categories
                Research Articles

                Plant science & Botany
                alfalfa,forage legumes,gene expression,lucerne,moisture stress.
                Plant science & Botany
                alfalfa, forage legumes, gene expression, lucerne, moisture stress.

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