Long recovery after heat shock

Abiotic stress is a major factor for crop productivity, a problem likely to be exacerbated by climate change. Improving the tolerance to environmental stress is one of the most important goals of crop breeding programmes. While the early responses to abiotic stress in plants are well studied, plant adaptation to enduring or recurring stress conditions has received little attention. This project investigates the molecular mechanism of the maintenance of acquired thermotolerance as a model case of stress memory in Arabidopsis. Arabidopsis seedlings acquire thermotolerance through a heat treatment at sublethal temperatures. To investigate the underlying mechanisms, we are investigating changes in the transcriptome at two timepoints after a heat acclimation treatment using Arabidopsis thaliana seedlings. Microarrays were used to compare gene expression at two timepoints after a heat acclimation treatment. RNA from three biological replicates per genotype and treatment (4 h after acclimation 52 h after acclimation, and 4 h non-treated control) was purified over an RNeasy Plant RNA extraction column (Qiagen) and processed for hybridization of Affymetrix ATH1 GeneChips (NASC microarray facility). The times were chosen to harvest all samples at the same time of day.