Plastic responses in the metabolome and functional traits of maize plants to temperature variations

Abstract

Environmentally inducible phenotypic plasticity is a major player in plant responses to climate change. However, metabolic responses and their role in determining the phenotypic plasticity of plants that are subjected to temperature variations remain poorly understood. The metabolomic profiles and metabolite levels in the leaves of three maize inbred lines grown in different temperature conditions were examined with a nuclear magnetic resonance metabolomic technique. The relationship of functional traits to metabolome profiles and the metabolic mechanism underlying temperature variations were then explored. A comparative analysis showed that during heat and cold stress, maize plants shared common plastic responses in biomass accumulation, carbon, nitrogen, sugars, some amino acids and compatible solutes. We also found that the plastic response of maize plants to heat stress was different from that under cold stress, mainly involving biomass allocation, shikimate and its aromatic amino acid derivatives, and other non-polar metabolites. The plastic responsiveness of functional traits of maize lines to temperature variations was low, while the metabolic responsiveness in plasticity was high, indicating that functional and metabolic plasticity may play different roles in maize plant adaptation to temperature variations. A linear regression analysis revealed that the maize lines could adapt to growth temperature variations through the interrelation of plastic responses in the metabolomes and functional traits, such as biomass allocation and the status of carbon and nitrogen. We provide valuable insight into the plastic response strategy of maize plants to temperature variations that will permit the optimisation of crop cultivation in an increasingly variable environment.

Evaluating maize phenotypic variance, heritability, and yield relationships at multiple biological scales across agronomically relevant environments

“…Most of the metabolites, however, show a relatively low repeatability, with the mean of 0.11. Metabolites are well known for their sensitivity to environment (Asiago et al, ; Baniasadi et al, ; Benevenuto et al, ; Sun, Gao, Li, Fu, & Zhang, ; Sun, Li, et al, 2016b; Tang et al, ). Nevertheless, there is still substantial amount of genetic variation for some of metabolites observed in this and other studies, including high levels of genetic control of trans ‐chlorogenic acid and galactinol (Andrew, Wallis, Harwood, Henson, & Foley, ) (Table ).…”

Large‐scale metabolite quantitative trait locus analysis provides new insights for high‐quality maize improvement

“…Metabolomics has recently made several important contributions to our understanding of fundamental aspects of maize biology, including metabolic responses to climate change, pathogen attack, microorganism resistance and dynamic development of plants (Walker et al ., ; Marti et al ., ; Sun et al ., ; de Abreu e Lima et al ., ; Wen et al ., ). To date, comparisons of the metabolic differences between cultivated maize and teosinte have, however, been relatively limited (Flint‐Garcia et al ., ).…”

Metabolite Profiling of adh1 Mutant Response to Cold Stress in Arabidopsis

“…Plastic responses have been reported for the metabolome during temperature changes (Sun et al, 2016). ROS (reactive oxygen) rather than CBF (C-repeat binding transcription factor/dehydrate responsive element binding factor) dominates rice gene expression and adaptation to low-temperatures, which is consistent with results for antioxidation and accumulation of numerous amino acids gathered via comparative metabolomic analysis (Zhang et al, 2016).…”

“…The ADH1 gene mutant of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii elicits metabolic restructuring during dark anoxic growth (Catalanotti et al, 2012; Magneschi et al, 2012). Exploring the temperature-induced change of the metabolome is a current field of interest (Kaplan et al, 2004; Sun et al, 2016), including metabolite composition of freezing tolerance (Korn et al, 2010). The results revealed that pyruvate, oxaloacetate, polyamine precursors, and compatible solutes increased during cold shock (Kaplan et al, 2004).…”