How plants respond to climate change: A new Virtual Special Issue of Plant, Cell & Environment

Potential impact of climate change on dietary grain protein content and its bioavailability-a mini review

The changing global climate brings a gradual yet constant and adverse shift in crop production. Grain crop plants, particularly cereals and legumes, respond varyingly to adverse climate, including reduction in grain yield and changes to their nutrient densities. An understanding of specific changes to crop systems under differing climatic conditions can help in planning diets to meet human nutrient sufficiency. Grain protein content is also affected by adverse environmental factors. Deficits in protein yield, linked to changes in grain or seed protein and antinutrient concentrations, have been reported in major food crops when exposed to elevated carbon dioxide, high temperature, drought, and humidity. These changes, in addition to affecting the quantity of indispensable or essential amino acids (IAA), also impact their bioavailability. Therefore, it is important to assess consequences of climate change on grain protein quality. An important tool to measure grain protein quality, is measuring its digestibility at the level of the ileum and its IAA concentration, linked to a metric called the Digestible IAA Score (DIAAS). A minimally invasive technique called the dual isotope tracer technique, which measures IAA digestibility after simultaneous administration of two different intrinsically labelled protein sources, one a test protein (2H/15N) and one a reference protein (13C) of predetermined digestibility, has been used in evaluation of grain protein IAA digestibility, and promises more in the evaluation of changes based on climate. This review discusses climate induced changes to grain protein quality through the prism of IAA digestibility, using the dual isotope tracer technique.

Geographic distribution and impacts of climate change on the suitable habitats of Glycyrrhiza species in China

Climate change has a major impact on the growth and distribution of plants. Glycyrrhiza is widely used in the treatment of many diseases in China. However, with the overexploitation and the growing demand for medicinal uses in of Glycyrrhiza plants. The investigation of the geographical distribution of Glycyrrhiza plants and the analysis of future climate change are of great significance for the conservation of Glycyrrhiza. In this study, combined with administrative maps of Chinese provinces, the present and future of geographical distribution and richness of six Glycyrrhiza plants in China were studied by using DIVA-GIS and MaxEnt software. A total of 981 herbarium records of these six species of Glycyrrhiza were collected to research. Results show that the change of climate in the future will lead to an increase in habitat suitability for some Glycyrrhiza species as follows: Glycyrrhiza inflata by 61.6%, Glycyrrhiza squamulosa by 47.5%, Glycyrrhiza pallidiflora by 34.0%, Glycyrrhiza yunnanensis by 49.0%, Glycyrrhiza glabra by 51.7%, and Glycyrrhiza aspera by 65.9%. Glycyrrhiza plants have considerable medicinal and economic value, so it is necessary to adopt targeted development and rational management strategies for it.

The greening ashore

More than half a billion years ago a streptophyte algal lineage began terraforming the terrestrial habitat and the Earth's atmosphere. This pioneering step enabled the subsequent evolution of all complex life on land, and the past decade has uncovered that many traits, both morphological and genetic, once thought to be unique to land plants, are conserved across some streptophyte algae. They provided the common ancestor of land plants with a repertoire of genes, of which many were adapted to overcome the new biotic and abiotic challenges. Exploring these molecular adaptations in non-tracheophyte species may help us to better prepare all green life, including our crops, for the challenges precipitated by the climate change of the Anthropocene because the challenges mostly differ by the speed with which they are now being met.

Structural analysis of temperature-dependent alternative splicing of HsfA2 pre-mRNA from tomato plants

Temperature-dependent alternative splicing was recently demonstrated for intron 2 of the gene coding for heat shock factor HsfA2 of the tomato plant Solanum lycopersicum, but the molecular mechanism regulating the abundance of such temperature-dependent splice variants is still unknown. We report here on regulatory pre-mRNA structures that could function as regulators by controlling the use of splice sites in a temperature-dependent manner. We investigate pre-mRNA structures at the splice sites of intron 2 of the gene coding for HsfA2 from S. lycopersicum using NMR- and CD-spectroscopy as well as in-line probing. The pre-mRNA undergoes conformational changes between two different secondary structures at the 3ʹ splice site of the intron in a temperature-dependent manner. Previously, it was shown that three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in intron 2 of the HsfA2 pre-mRNA affect the splicing efficiency of its pre-mRNA and are linked to the thermotolerance in different tomato species. By comparing pre-mRNA fragments of the tomato species S. lycopersicum and S. peruvianum, we show that these SNPs result in substantial structural differences between the pre-mRNAs of the two species.

Physiological Alteration in Sunflower Plants (Helianthus annuus L.) Exposed to High CO2 and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi

Sunflower plants (Helianthus annuus L.) in a CO2-enriched atmosphere (eCO2) were used herein to examine the developmental and physiological effects of biofertilization with mycorrhizae (Rhizophagus irregularis). The eCO2 environment stimulated colonization using R. irregularis mycorrhizal fungi, as compared to plants grown under ambient CO2 conditions (aCO2). This colonization promotes plant growth due to an increased nutrient content (P, K, Mg, and B), which favors a greater synthesis of photosynthetic pigments. Biofertilized plants (M) under eCO2 conditions have a higher concentration of carbon compounds in their leaves, as compared to non-biofertilized eCO2 plants (NM). The biofertilization (M) of sunflowers with R. irregularis decreased the C/N ratio, as compared to the NM plants, decreasing the hydrogen peroxide content and increasing the antioxidant enzyme activity (catalase and APX). These results suggest that sunflower symbiosis with R. irregularis improves the absorption of N, while also decreasing the plant’s oxidative stress. It may be concluded that biofertilization with mycorrhizae (R. irregularis) may potentially replace the chemical fertilization of sunflower plants (H. annuus L.), resulting in more environmentally friendly agricultural practices. This information is essential to our understanding of the mechanisms influencing the C and N dynamic in future climate change scenarios, in which high CO2 levels are expected.