Abstract
Plants are particularly subject to environmental stress, as they cannot move from unfavourable surroundings. As a consequence they have to react in situ. In any case, plants have to sense the stress, then the signal has to be transduced to engage the appropriate response. Stress response is effected by regulating genes, by turning on molecular mechanisms to protect the whole organism and its components and/or to repair damage. Reactions vary depending on the type of stress and its intensity, but some are commonly turned on because some responses to different abiotic stresses are shared. In addition, there are multiple ways for plants to respond to environmental stress, depending on the species and life strategy, but also multiple ways within a species depending on plant variety or ecotype. It is regularly accepted that populations of a single species originating from diverse geographic origins and/or that have been subjected to different selective pressure, have evolved retaining the best alleles for completing their life cycle. Therefore, the study of natural variation in response to abiotic stress, can help unravel key genes and alleles for plants to cope with their unfavourable physical and chemical surroundings. This review is focusing on Arabidopsis thaliana which has been largely adopted by the global scientific community as a model organism. Also, tools and data that facilitate investigation of natural variation and abiotic stress encountered in the wild are set out. Characterization of accessions, QTLs detection and cloning of alleles responsible for variation are presented.
Highlights
Sequencing the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, the first one completed in plants, was achieved in2000, bringing new lights on higher plants’ genetics [1]
McKhann et al show important variation for tolerance to -5 °C exposure after acclimation [86]. They reinforced the fact that freezing tolerance is a complex character showing that CBF and COR (COld Regulated) genes respond differently to stress among eight accessions, though there is no clear correlation between gene expression, sequence polymorphism and freezing tolerance
Results showed that elevated expression of heavy metal transporter gene ATPase4 (HMA4) is likely the mechanism for improving Cd/Zn tolerance in plants under conditions of Cd/Zn excess by maintaining low cellular Cd2+ and Zn2+
Summary
Sequencing the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, the first one completed in plants, was achieved in. Several investigations have been conducted in the past few years assessing pattern of polymorphism, in order to describe the genetic variability of the species These studies should reveal the demographic event such as population expansion and/or the involvement of selective events that have shaped populations across the world [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Ran a survey on 12 accessions sequenced at 334 loci and concluded that population expansion in Arabidopsis is not sufficient to explain the observed patterns of polymorphism [8] They showed that parameters such as selection should be considered in addition. A more precise analysis has localized one of the glacial refugia on the Iberian Peninsula [7]
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