Genome-level responses to the environment: plant desiccation tolerance

Mariana A Silva Artur; Maria-Cecília D Costa; Jill M Farrant; Henk W M Hilhorst

doi:10.1042/ETLS20180139

Genome-level responses to the environment: plant desiccation tolerance

Emerg Top Life Sci. 2019 May 10;3(2):153-163. doi: 10.1042/ETLS20180139.

Authors

Mariana A Silva Artur^{1

2}, Maria-Cecília D Costa³, Jill M Farrant³, Henk W M Hilhorst²

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Environmental Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
² Laboratory of Plant Physiology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
³ Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South-Africa.

PMID: 33523150
DOI: 10.1042/ETLS20180139

Abstract

Plants being sessile organisms are well equipped genomically to respond to environmental stressors peculiar to their habitat. Evolution of plants onto land was enabled by the ability to tolerate extreme water loss (desiccation), a feature that has been retained within genomes but not universally expressed in most land plants today. In the majority of higher plants, desiccation tolerance (DT) is expressed only in reproductive tissues (seeds and pollen), but some 135 angiosperms display vegetative DT. Here, we review genome-level responses associated with DT, pointing out common and yet sometimes discrepant features, the latter relating to evolutionary adaptations to particular niches. Understanding DT can lead to the ultimate production of crops with greater tolerance of drought than is currently realized.

Keywords: drought; evolution; genomics; plant desiccation tolerance.