Lipid remodelling: Unravelling the response to cold stress in Arabidopsis and its extremophile relative Eutrema salsugineum

Abstract

Environmental constraints limit the geographic distribution of many economically important crops. Cold stress is an important abiotic stress that affects plant growth and development, resulting in loss of vigour and surface lesions. These symptoms are caused by, among other metabolic processes, the altered physical and chemical composition of cell membranes. As a major component of cell membranes lipids have been recognized as having a significant role in cold stress, both as a mechanical defence through leaf surface protection and plasma membrane remodelling, and as signal transduction molecules. We present an overview integrating gene expression and lipidomic data published so far in Arabidopsis and its relative the extremophile Eutrema salsugineum. This data enables a better understanding of the contribution of the lipidome in determining the ability to tolerate suboptimal temperature conditions. Collectively this information will allow us to identify the key lipids and pathways responsible for resilience, enabling the development of new approaches for crop tolerance to stress.

Keywords: Abiotic stress; Cold-responsive genes; Eutrema salsugineum; Lipidome; Transcription factors.

Fig. 1

Schematic representation of the desaturation in phospholipids and sphingolipids species crucial for the remodelling of the plasma membrane under cold stress. PI – phosphatidylinositol; PIP – phosphoinositides; PC – phosphatidylcholine; PE – phosphatidylethanolamine; PS – phosphatidylserine; PA – phosphatidic acid; FAD – Fatty Acid Desaturase. Cer – Ceramides; GIPC – glycosylinositolphosphoryl ceramide; GluCer – glucosylceramide; DES – desaturase.

Fig. 2

Expression levels of differentially expressed TFs involved in lipid metabolism (n = 4; ± standard error). Plants were grown at optimal conditions (control) at 23 °C day/18 °C night, 200 μmol m − 2 s − 1 light intensity, 16/8 light/dark photoperiod, and relative humidity 65%, were subjected to chilling (4 °C) for 3 days. Leaves of 22 days old plants were used total RNA extraction, and RNA-Seq analyses performed. TruSeq RNA libraries made and run of 4 lanes of 100 bp paired end Illumina Hi-Seq 2500 in Rapid run mode, generating 41–83 million reads per sample. This resulted in  ≈ 25000 genes with reads aligned in Arabidopsis (* represent differentially expression with a 5% significance level between control vs. cold).