Trimethylamine oxide is a new plant signaling molecule that mediates abiotic stress tolerance

We report the identification of RCI5, an Arabidopsis cold inducible gene encoding a FMO. RCI5 seems to participate in the biosynthesis of TMAO, a new plant methabolite. We also demonstrate that TMAO positevely controls Arabidopsis tolerance to low temperature, high salt in the soil and drough stress, by promoting a wide transcriptomic reprograming of stress-relate genes. Finally, we found that diferent crops also contain TMAO in their tissues, and that exogenous applications of TMAO also increases tomato tolerance to abiotic stress. Overall design: Transcriptomic profiling through RNAseq of Col-0 and FMO5-OE T1 plants under control conditions.