Translational Components Contribute to Acclimation Responses to High Light, Heat, and Cold in Arabidopsis

Summary Plant metabolism is broadly reprogrammed during acclimation to abiotic changes. Most previous studies have focused on transitions from standard to single stressful conditions. Here, we systematically analyze acclimation processes to levels of light, heat, and cold stress that subtly alter physiological parameters and assess their reversibility during de-acclimation. Metabolome and transcriptome changes were monitored at 11 different time points. Unlike transcriptome changes, most alterations in metabolite levels did not readily return to baseline values, except in the case of cold acclimation. Similar regulatory networks operate during (de-)acclimation to high light and cold, whereas heat and high-light responses exhibit similar dynamics, as determined by surprisal and conditional network analyses. In all acclimation models tested here, super-hubs in conditional transcriptome networks are enriched for components involved in translation, particularly ribosomes. Hence, we suggest that the ribosome serves as a common central hub for the control of three different (de-)acclimation responses.
Graphical Abstract
Highlights • Time series of acclimation and de-acclimation without pleiotropic stresses • Kinetics of transcriptomes and metabolomes under three environmental conditions • Transcriptomes return to a baseline, but HL and heat metabolomes do not • All acclimation responses involve the translational machinery and photosynthesis
Biological Sciences; Metabolomics; Plant Biology; Plants; Transcriptomics