The occurrence of drought is projected to increase in upcoming years due to the effects of climate change. To prepare for these changes, scientists have begun looking into ways to make agriculture more resistant to drought conditions. Researchers at the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) have recently published two studies that describe mechanisms of plant growth and their ability to adapt to adverse environmental conditions that could help in developing hardier plants in the future.
The first study, published in Molecular Systems Biology, focused on how root cells know when to stop growing in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The researchers set up an experiment to test if the signal to stop growth comes from the plant sensing the passage of time, an ability to detect the root’s position or if the cells are able to detect their size. Observations using confocal microscopy revealed that the plant stops growing based on its ability to detect size, while mathematical modeling was used to define the role of plant steroids called brassinosteroids in this process.
The second study, published in the Journal of Cell Science, describes the post-damage cell repair capacity of plant roots. The key finding of the second study is that plant steroids signal to reservoir stem cells in response to the death of root stem cells. This response leads to downstream activation of cell division in order to replace the cells damaged by this event.
"Plant steroids, unlike most of plant hormones, are not transported through long distances. However, our study proves that there is a transportation of these hormones at a short distance, and this is important for cell communication during cell renovation", says Fidel Lozano Elena, pre-doctoral student in CRAG and first author of the study. These complex signaling systems contribute to drought resistance in plants.
Image: Arabidopsis root seen with confocal microscopy. Stem cells have been marked with different colors. Those in red are the reservoir stem cells. Image courtesy of Fidel Lozano Elena.