Premium
Stomatal function has an element of hysteresis
Author(s) -
Takahashi Yohei,
Kinoshita Toshinori
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
new phytologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.742
H-Index - 244
eISSN - 1469-8137
pISSN - 0028-646X
DOI - 10.1111/nph.13149
Subject(s) - guard cell , abscisic acid , biology , abiotic stress , acclimatization , abiotic component , botany , arabidopsis , crassulacean acid metabolism , osmolyte , microbiology and biotechnology , photosynthesis , ecology , mutant , gene , biochemistry
Plants are unable to move away from stressful habitats, thus they have evolved adaptive morphogenetic and cellular responses to fluctuating environmental conditions. Terrestrial plants experience a diverse array of stresses, including those that are abiotic, such as drought, widely fluctuating temperatures and excessive insolation; in addition, they are subjected to biotic stresses imposed by pathogens and animal grazers. Plants respond to these negative influences by increasing their stress tolerance levels. A history of stress exposure induces responses that increase the ability of individuals to cope with future stress. This is a process of hysteresis, which operates in the absence of any nervous memory system in plants (Bruce et al., 2007). Thus, Arabidopsis plants with prior experience of drought acquire an enhanced ability to reduce water loss from leaves (Ding et al., 2012), thereby indicating that stress induces a ‘memory’ that plastically changes plant behaviours. In this issue of New Phytologist, Virlouvet & Fromm (pp. 596–607) report that guard cells, which are responsible for stomatal movements, facilitate dehydration stress memory and maintain stomatal closure even after a period of relief from drought, possibly by increasing abscisic acid (ABA) levels and regulating gene expression (Fig. 1).