Plant responses to cold: transcriptome analysis of wheat

Abstract

SummaryTemperature and light are important environmental stimuli that have a profound influence on the growth and development of plants. Wheat varieties can be divided on the basis of whether they require an extended period of cold to flower (vernalization). Varieties that have a requirement for vernalization also tend to be winter hardy and are able to withstand quite extreme subzero temperatures. This capacity, however, is not constitutive and plants require a period of exposure to low, non-freezing temperatures to acquire freezing tolerance: this process is referred to as cold acclimation. Cold acclimation and the acquisition of freezing tolerance require the orchestration of many different, seemingly disparate physiological and biochemical changes. These changes are, at least in part, mediated through the differential expression of many genes. Some of these genes code for effector molecules that participate directly to alleviate stress. Others code for proteins involved in signal transduction or transcription factors that control the expression of further banks of genes. In this review, we provide an overview of some of the main features of cold acclimation with particular focus on transcriptome reprogramming. In doing so, we highlight some of the important differences between cold-hardy and cold-sensitivevarieties. An understanding of these processes is of great potential importance because cold and freezing stress are major limiting factors for growing crop plants and periodically account for significant losses in plant productivity.

Advances in physiological and molecular aspects of plant cold tolerance

“…Cold acclimation leads to large-scale transcriptome changes that program the production of an array of proteins to help plants surviving freezing stress (Kocsy et al 2010;Winfield et al 2010). Recent studies describing full genome transcripts and mutational and transgenic plant analysis have provided a great deal of information about the complex transcriptional system that functions under cold acclimation (Jan et al 2009).…”

Large deletions in the CBF gene cluster at the Fr-B2 locus are associated with reduced frost tolerance in wheat

“…During cold acclimation, plants undergo large-scale changes in their transcriptome, which in turn activates the production of an array of proteins to aid the plant's survival during subsequent freezing stress (Kocsy et al 2010;Winfield et al 2010).…”

Cold hardening protects cereals from oxidative stress and necrotrophic fungal pathogenesis

“…Functional predictions of transcript sequences suggested that cold hardening affected the activity of genes involved in photosynthesis, which is characteristic of cold acclimated plant tissues [14,43,44]. One glucan endo-1,3-beta-glucosidase transcript was also found to be upregulated.…”