Natural variation in [i]Arabidopsis thaliana[/i] response to water deficit
Résumé
Plant response to soil water deficit involves complex survival strategies. Among others, they include efforts to maintain constant water potential by limitation of water loss e.g. decrease of transpiration rate and arrest of growth. Plants have also evolved dehydration tolerance mechanisms, leading to reorganization of global transcription patterns and accumulation of osmotically active solutes inside cells. We utilized the phenotyping platform PHENOPSIS to conduct an experiment on 18 Arabidopsis accessions in order to study natural variation in response to water deficit. Our set of accessions was chosen on the basis of annexin 1 (AtAnn1) mRNA level, that was previously related to drought tolerance. Plants were grown in control conditions or were subjected to moderate and severe soil water deficit. Measured traits were mainly associated with growth and transpiration, allowing us to assess responses of different accessions to applied environmental stresses. Additionally, we harvested leaf samples to determine changes in gene expression patterns induced by dehydration. Used set of accessions displayed high variation in response to water deficit, however unrelated to AtAnn1 transcript level. Principal component analysis performed on physiological data revealed condition-dependent clustering, as well as presence of individuals behaving in a significantly distinct fashion, suggesting their extreme low or high response. We are joining phenotypic and molecular analyses together to acquire more complete description of plant response to water deficit and we are also looking for links between measured variables of both types of data.
Project was funded by EPPN and Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (grant no. UMO-2012/05/N/NZ9/01396)