Extreme low temperature tolerance in woody plants - PubMed (original) (raw)

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Extreme low temperature tolerance in woody plants

G Richard Strimbeck et al. Front Plant Sci. 2015.

Abstract

Woody plants in boreal to arctic environments and high mountains survive prolonged exposure to temperatures below -40°C and minimum temperatures below -60°C, and laboratory tests show that many of these species can also survive immersion in liquid nitrogen at -196°C. Studies of biochemical changes that occur during acclimation, including recent proteomic and metabolomic studies, have identified changes in carbohydrate and compatible solute concentrations, membrane lipid composition, and proteins, notably dehydrins, that may have important roles in survival at extreme low temperature (ELT). Consideration of the biophysical mechanisms of membrane stress and strain lead to the following hypotheses for cellular and molecular mechanisms of survival at ELT: (1) Changes in lipid composition stabilize membranes at temperatures above the lipid phase transition temperature (-20 to -30°C), preventing phase changes that result in irreversible injury. (2) High concentrations of oligosaccharides promote vitrification or high viscosity in the cytoplasm in freeze-dehydrated cells, which would prevent deleterious interactions between membranes. (3) Dehydrins bind membranes and further promote vitrification or act stearically to prevent membrane-membrane interactions.

Keywords: acclimation; biochemistry; cold; frost; hardening; hardiness; tolerance; vitirification.

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Figures

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 1

(A) Example of REL data and temperature response curves for fully acclimated needles from MLT and ELT tolerant species (Picea sitchensis and Picea obovata, respectively). Different symbols represent three different trees for each species. Horizontal and vertical dashed lines show location of the parameters RELmax and Tm, respectively for P. sitchensis (adapted from Strimbeck et al., 2007). (B,C) Changes in temperature response curves and Tm during acclimation for P. sitchensis (B) and P. obovata (C) (adapted from Strimbeck et al., 2008).

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 2

Daily maximum and minimum temperatures and seasonal acclimation and deacclimation in Picea sitchensis (an MLT tolerant species from a temperate oceanic environment) and P. obovata (an ELT tolerant Siberian species). Colored backgrounds indicate acclimation phases in P. obovata determined by cluster analysis of metabolomic data: pink, pre-acclimation; yellow, early acclimation; green, late acclimation; blue, fully acclimated (adapted from Strimbeck et al., 2008; Angelcheva et al., 2014).

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 3

Relative concentrations of 11 metabolites during cold acclimation in Picea obovata. Colored backgrounds indicate acclimation phases determined by cluster analysis of metabolomic data: pink, pre-acclimation; yellow, early acclimation; green, late acclimation; blue, fully acclimated (adapted from Angelcheva et al., 2014).

FIGURE 4

FIGURE 4

Principle component biplot of LT tolerance, sugar, and dehydrin (Dhn and CAP) data for P. obovata. Red lines indicate direction and strength of each variable. Tm and RELmax both decreased during acclimation, so greater low temperature tolerance was generally associated with higher levels of all sugars and dehydrins except sucrose and Dhn7. Dates and arrows indicate mean principle component scores for samples from three trees on each date. Data for 26 September and 24 April were excluded due to missing values for sugars and dehydrins, respectively (data from Strimbeck et al., 2008; Kjellsen et al., 2013).

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