Drought, metabolites, and Arabidopsis natural variation: a promising combination for understanding adaptation to water-limited environments

• Published in: Current opinion in plant biology Vol. 14; no. 3; pp. 240 - 245
• Main Authors: Verslues, Paul E, Juenger, Thomas E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2011; [Oxford, UK]: Pergamon: Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Adaptation, Physiological - genetics; Arabidopsis; Arabidopsis - genetics; Arabidopsis - metabolism; Arabidopsis - physiology; drought; Droughts; Environment; genes; Genes, Plant - genetics; Genetic Variation; metabolism; metabolites; Models, Biological; Phenotype; Proline - analysis; Proline - metabolism; quantitative genetics; Temperature; Water - metabolism; water potential; water stress
• ISSN: 1369-5266; 1879-0356
• DOI: 10.1016/j.pbi.2011.04.006

► It is unclear how metabolic changes contribute to drought resistance. ► Arabidopsis is distributed across habitats that differ dramatically in water availability and uses primarily a low water potential/dehydration avoidance strategy to cope with water limitation. ► Natural variation in drought response is relatively uncharacterized but includes metabolic traits such as proline accumulation. ► Quantitative genetics combined with appropriate phenotypic data can be one avenue for identifying genes important for drought adaptation. Drought elicits substantial changes in plant metabolism and it remains a challenge to determine which of these changes represent adaptive responses and which of them are merely neutral effects or even symptoms of damage. Arabidopsis primarily uses low water potential/dehydration avoidance strategies to respond to water limitation. The large variation in evolved stress responses among accessions can be a powerful tool to identify ecologically important and adaptive traits; however, collection of relevant phenotype data under controlled water stress is often a limiting factor. Quantitative genetics of Arabidopsis has great potential to find the genes underlying variation in drought-affected metabolic traits, for example proline metabolism, as well as overall adaptation.