The Game of Timing: Circadian Rhythms Intersect with Changing Environments

Abstract

Recurring patterns are an integral part of life on Earth. Through evolution or breeding, plants have acquired systems that coordinate with the cyclic patterns driven by Earth's movement through space. The biosystem responses to these physical rhythms result in biological cycles of daily and seasonal activity that feed back into the physical cycles. Signaling networks to coordinate growth and molecular activities with these persistent cycles have been integrated into plant biochemistry. The plant circadian clock is the coordinator of this complex, multiscale, temporal schedule. However, we have detailed knowledge of the circadian clock components and functions in only a few species under controlled conditions. We are just beginning to understand how the clock functions in real-world conditions. This review examines what we know about the circadian clock in diverse plant species, the challenges with extrapolating data from controlled environments, and the need to anticipate how plants will respond to climate change. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Plant Biology, Volume 74 is May 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Diurnal.plant.tools in 2024: expanding toMarchantia polymorphaand four angiosperms

“…All plants consist of at least one member in this gene family but differ in the representation in CIRCADIAN CLOCK-ASSOCIATED 1 ( CCA1 ) and LCL/REVEILLE ( RVE ) clades. In higher plants, there is a larger number of circadian clock components due to events such as genome duplication and polyploidization as compared to basal plants, and this is especially true for the MYB transcription factors (10 copies in Arabidopsis) and the CCT protein (17 copies in Arabidopsis) (Laosuntisuk, Elorriaga and Doherty, 2023). In order to effectively compare the circadian clocks across species, information regarding a gene’s spatial-temporal expression is necessary on top of sequence similarity.…”

“…In addition, when sequence similarity is taken into consideration, AT5G02840 , annotated as RVE4 on TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR), no date b) is the most likely functional ortholog to MpRVE as they belong to the same clade (Supplementary Figure 2). AT2G46830 , on the other hand, is annotated as CCA1 on TAIR (The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR), no date a), which has been noted to be lost in Marchantia (Laosuntisuk, Elorriaga and Doherty, 2023).…”

“…Given the importance of photosynthesis which plants rely on to obtain energy, it is not surprising that the quality and amount of light sensed by the photoreceptors affects photosynthesis and related processes such as carbon metabolism, growth and response to stresses (Hsu and Harmer, 2014). Developmental processes such as flowering are also dependent on day length to ensure that such costly developmental processes occur at the right time of the year to avoid harsh weather and pollination success for maximal reproductive fitness (Laosuntisuk, Elorriaga and Doherty, 2023). Anticipatory defence mechanisms, such as the accumulation of jasmonic acid during the day when herbivores are active allow the plant to channel limited resources to the most important processes in a timely manner (Greenham and McClung, 2015).…”

A Day in the Life of Arabidopsis:24-Hour Time-lapse Single-nucleus Transcriptomics Reveal Cell-type specific Circadian Rhythms

“…Considering that clock components exhibit significant evolutionary conservation across angiosperms 50,51 , our snRNA-seq data on circadian expression can be leveraged beyond Arabidopsis research and serve as a robust tool to pinpoint circadian regulators in a diverse range of plant species. Moreover, for the many plant species in which the circadian components remain partially unclear [52][53][54] , our time-series snRNA-seq approach could be applied to quickly generate a potential gene list of key circadian regulators ranked by the number of cell types that they are oscillating in.…”

Biological clock regulation by the PER gene family: a new perspective on tumor development

“…The Earth’s rotation generates environmental variables with a 24-h periodicity, including temperature and light fluctuations ( Hou et al, 2022 ; Laosuntisuk et al, 2023 ). Various life forms, including animals, plants, bacteria, fungi, have developed intricate internal timing mechanisms to synchronize their behavior and physiological processes with these cyclic environmental changes ( Patton and Hastings, 2023 ).…”