Norway spruce deploys tissue‐specific responses during acclimation to cold

Abstract

Climate change in the conifer‐dominated boreal forest is expected to lead to warmer but more dynamic winter air temperatures, reducing the depth and duration of snow cover and lowering winter soil temperatures. To gain insight into the mechanisms that have enabled conifers to dominate extreme cold environments, we performed genome‐wide RNA‐Seq analysis from needles and roots of non‐dormant two‐year Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst), and contrasted these response to herbaceous model Arabidopsis We show that the main transcriptional response of Norway spruce needles exposed to cold was delayed relative to Arabidopsis, and this delay was associated with slower development of freezing tolerance. Despite this difference in timing, Norway spruce principally utilizes early response transcription factors (TFs) belonging to the same gene families as Arabidopsis, indicating broad evolutionary conservation of cold response networks. In keeping with their different metabolic and developmental states, needles and root of Norway spruce showed contrasting results. Regulatory network analysis identified both conserved TFs with known roles in cold acclimation (e.g. homologs of ICE1, AKS3, and of the NAC and AP2/ERF superfamilies), but also a root‐specific bHLH101 homolog, providing functional insights into cold stress response strategies in Norway spruce.

Physiological and molecular mechanisms of the response of roots of Pinus massoniana Lamb. to low-temperature stress

“…It is indisputable that TFs regulate plant responses to stress and improve their ability to adapt to stress (Agarwal et al, 2010; Guo et al, 2018 ; Vergara et al, 2022 ). The CBF gene, a member of the AP2/EREBP family that acts in the CBF/DREB1-dependent cold signaling pathway in plants, initiates the response system of plants to cold stress by regulating the expression of the downstream cold-responsive ( COR ) gene ( Shinozaki, 2000 ; Hu et al, 2013 ; Jia et al, 2016 ; Lv et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Studies have mainly focused on a few types of trees, such as Populus spp. L., Pinus sylvestris , and Picea abies ( Joosen et al, 2006 ; Maestrini et al, 2009 ; Benedict et al, 2010 ; Vergara et al, 2022 ), and have addressed antioxidant enzymes ( Renaut et al, 2006 ) and TFs ( Vergara et al, 2022 ). Recently, researchers have paid more attention to the relationship between cold resistance and lignin and starch synthesis pathways ( Zhao et al, 2019 ; Liang et al, 2022 ; Liu et al, 2022 ).…”

Integrative physiological, transcriptome, and metabolome analyses reveal the associated genes and metabolites involved in cold stress response in common vetch (Vicia sativa L.)

“…Compared with the microarray method, high‐throughput sequencing has significantly improved the efficiency of transcript collection, which has been used to reveal the underlying regulatory networks of multiple species in response to cold stress, such as Medicago sativa (Zhou et al, 2018), Zanthoxylum bungeanum (Tian et al, 2021), Picea abies (Vergara et al, 2022), and Fragaria nilgerrensis (Liu et al, 2021). In a recent study, high‐throughput transcriptome sequencing revealed differences in the molecular mechanisms of the cold stress response between V. sativa 's leaves and roots, and the overexpression of six cold‐resistant candidate genes enhanced cold tolerance in yeast (Min, Liu, et al, 2020).…”