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Title: CBF-dependent and CBF-independent regulatory pathways contribute to the differences in freezing tolerance and cold-regulated gene expression of two Arabidopsis ecotypes locally adapted to sites in Sweden and Italy

Journal Article · · PLoS ONE

Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) increases in freezing tolerance in response to low nonfreezing temperatures, a phenomenon known as cold acclimation. The CBF regulatory pathway, which contributes to cold acclimation, includes three genes—CBF1, CBF2 and CBF3—encoding closely-related transcription factors that regulate the expression of more than 100 genes—the CBF regulon—that impart freezing tolerance. Here we compare the CBF pathways of two Arabidopsis ecotypes collected from sites in Sweden (SW) and Italy (IT). Previous studies showed that the SW ecotype was more freezing tolerant than the IT ecotype and that the IT ecotype had a nonfunctional CBF2 gene. Here we present results establishing that the difference in CBF2 alleles contributes to the difference in freezing tolerance between the two ecotypes. However, other differences in the CBF pathway as well as CBF-independent pathways contribute the large majority of the difference in freezing tolerance between the two ecotypes. The results also provided evidence that most cold-induced CBF regulon genes in both the SW and IT ecotypes are coregulated by CBF-independent pathways. Additional analysis comparing our results with those published by others examining the Col-0 accession resulted in the identification of 44 CBF regulon genes that were conserved among the three accessions suggesting that they likely have important functions in life at low temperature. The comparison further supported the conclusion that the CBF pathway can account for a large portion of the increase in freezing tolerance that occurs with cold acclimation in a given accession, but that CBF-independent pathways can also make a major contribution.

Research Organization:
Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-91ER20021; DEB 1022202
OSTI ID:
1610155
Journal Information:
PLoS ONE, Vol. 13, Issue 12; ISSN 1932-6203
Publisher:
Public Library of ScienceCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 30 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Omics Approaches for Cold Stress Tolerance in Plants book August 2019
Less photoprotection can be good in some genetic and environmental contexts journal July 2019