Natural variation in stomatal responses to environmental changes among Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes

PLoS One. 2015 Feb 23;10(2):e0117449. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0117449. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

Stomata are small pores surrounded by guard cells that regulate gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere. Guard cells integrate multiple environmental signals and control the aperture width to ensure appropriate stomatal function for plant survival. Leaf temperature can be used as an indirect indicator of stomatal conductance to environmental signals. In this study, leaf thermal imaging of 374 Arabidopsis ecotypes was performed to assess their stomatal responses to changes in environmental CO2 concentrations. We identified three ecotypes, Köln (Kl-4), Gabelstein (Ga-0), and Chisdra (Chi-1), that have particularly low responsiveness to changes in CO2 concentrations. We next investigated stomatal responses to other environmental signals in these selected ecotypes, with Col-0 as the reference. The stomatal responses to light were also reduced in the three selected ecotypes when compared with Col-0. In contrast, their stomatal responses to changes in humidity were similar to those of Col-0. Of note, the responses to abscisic acid, a plant hormone involved in the adaptation of plants to reduced water availability, were not entirely consistent with the responses to humidity. This study demonstrates that the stomatal responses to CO2 and light share closely associated signaling mechanisms that are not generally correlated with humidity signaling pathways in these ecotypes. The results might reflect differences between ecotypes in intrinsic response mechanisms to environmental signals.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Arabidopsis / physiology*
  • Carbon Dioxide / analysis
  • Environment*
  • Humidity
  • Light
  • Plant Stomata / physiology*
  • Signal Transduction

Substances

  • Carbon Dioxide

Grants and funding

This work was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Priority Ares (Nos. 21114002 and 26221103) to K.I. from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.