The role of chloroplasts in responding to drought stress in plants

叶绿体在植物应对干旱胁迫中的作用

• 批准号: 2293754
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2293754
• 关键词: role; chloroplasts; responding; drought; stress

Food security is a major problem facing the World and one that is going to become more pressing in coming decades due to increased population and new challenges imposed by climate change (1). With a limit on irrigation, much of the estimated 50% increase in productivity required by 2030 will need to come from rain-fed agriculture and thus drought is the major abiotic stress limiting crop yields worldwide. Since photosynthesis is so sensitive to the environment, the chloroplast plays a central role in the response of plants to environmental stresses including drought. For drought stress, there is an increasing body of evidence that enhancement of the chloroplast-localised tetrapyrrole pathway through treatment with tetrapyrrole precursors can protect plants (2). Although the mechanism is not well understood, heme synthesis is suggested to be the critical factor. Heme is also a key player in communication between the chloroplast and nucleus (3) and our own transcriptomic results show some overlap between retrograde- and drought-responsive genes. In this project we will test the hypotheses that activation of chloroplast-to-nucleus retrograde signalling protects against drought and that drought modifies the chloroplast proteome to bring about these changes in retrograde signalling.

粮食安全是世界面临的一个重大问题，由于人口增加和气候变化带来的新挑战，这一问题在未来几十年将变得更加紧迫 (1)。由于灌溉受到限制，预计到 2030 年所需生产力增加 50%，其中大部分将需要来自雨养农业，因此干旱是限制全球农作物产量的主要非生物胁迫。由于光合作用对环境非常敏感，叶绿体在植物对包括干旱在内的环境胁迫的响应中发挥着核心作用。对于干旱胁迫，越来越多的证据表明，通过四吡咯前体处理增强叶绿体定位的四吡咯途径可以保护植物 (2)。尽管其机制尚不清楚，但血红素合成被认为是关键因素。血红素也是叶绿体和细胞核之间通讯的关键参与者 (3)，我们自己的转录组结果显示逆行反应基因和干旱反应基因之间存在一些重叠。在这个项目中，我们将测试以下假设：叶绿体到细胞核的逆行信号的激活可以防止干旱，并且干旱会改变叶绿体蛋白质组以带来逆行信号的这些变化。