Abstract
Global warming is strongly affecting the maritime Antarctica climate and the consequent melting of perennial snow and ice covers resulted in increased colonization by plants. Colobanthus quitensis is a vascular plant highly adapted to the harsh environmental conditions of Antarctic Peninsula and understanding how the plant is responding to global warming is a new challenging target for modern cell physiology. To this aim, we performed differential proteomic analysis on C. quitensis plants grown in natural conditions compared to plants grown for one year inside open top chambers (OTCs) which determine an increase of about 4 °C at midday, mimicking the effect of global warming. A thorough analysis of the up- and downregulated proteins highlighted an extensive metabolism reprogramming leading to enhanced photoprotection and oxidative stress control as well as reduced content of cell wall components. Overall, OTCs growth seems to be advantageous for C. quitensis plants which could benefit from a better CO2 diffusion into the mesophyll and a reduced ROS-mediated photodamage.
Highlights
Antarctica is one of the last pristine environments where endemic organisms have progressively specialized to deal with very harsh weather conditions, living often at their physiological limit
A differential proteomic analysis was carried out between C. quitensis plants grown in natural conditions (OUT samples) and inside open top chambers (OTC samples) which allow plants to live at slightly warmer temperature, mimicking the effect of global warming
The peptide sequences obtained by nanoLC-MS/MS were compared with the putative amino acid sequences of the C. quitensis protein database allowing to identify with certainty the proteins really expressed
Summary
Antarctica is one of the last pristine environments where endemic organisms have progressively specialized to deal with very harsh weather conditions, living often at their physiological limit. This specialization makes them extremely susceptible to any minimal environmental change that could be responsible for the extinction of some species. 1.5 ◦ C along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula [1,2] This makes maritime Antarctic an open-air laboratory where the study of the genetic and molecular traits which drive the adaptation of living organisms to rapidly changing environmental conditions may permit the disclosure of molecular biomarkers for efficient climate change monitoring. Both of them display many morphological and physiological traits related to resistance against constantly low
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