Rethinking temperature effects on leaf growth, gene expression and metabolism: Diel variation matters


Loading...

Date

2021-07

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

Altmetric

Data

Abstract

Plants have evolved to grow under prominently fluctuating environmental conditions. In experiments under controlled conditions, temperature is often set to artificial, binary regimes with constant values at day and at night. This study investigated how such a diel (24 hr) temperature regime affects leaf growth, carbohydrate metabolism and gene expression, compared to a temperature regime with a field‐like gradual increase and decline throughout 24 hr. Soybean (Glycine max) was grown under two contrasting diel temperature treatments. Leaf growth was measured in high temporal resolution. Periodical measurements were performed of carbohydrate concentrations, carbon isotopes as well as the transcriptome by RNA sequencing. Leaf growth activity peaked at different times under the two treatments, which cannot be explained intuitively. Under field‐like temperature conditions, leaf growth followed temperature and peaked in the afternoon, whereas in the binary temperature regime, growth increased at night and decreased during daytime. Differential gene expression data suggest that a synchronization of cell division activity seems to be evoked in the binary temperature regime. Overall, the results show that the coordination of a wide range of metabolic processes is markedly affected by the diel variation of temperature, which emphasizes the importance of realistic environmental settings in controlled condition experiments.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

44 (7)

Pages / Article No.

2262 - 2276

Publisher

Wiley

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

circadian; controlled conditions; fluctuating temperature; natural environment; storage carbohydrates

Organisational unit

03648 - Buchmann, Nina / Buchmann, Nina check_circle
03969 - Studer, Bruno / Studer, Bruno check_circle
03894 - Walter, Achim / Walter, Achim check_circle

Notes

Funding

153545 - Carbon isotope fractionation during leaf and root respiration as a function of nitrogen nutrition (SNF)
169542 - PhenoCOOL: Wheat and soybean phenotyping under cold conditions using growth as a dynamic trait (SNF)

Related publications and datasets