Metabolome plasticity in 241 Arabidopsis thaliana accessions reveals evolutionary cold adaptation processes
- Author(s)
- Jakob Weiszmann, Dirk Walther, Pieter Clauw, Georg Back, Joanna Gunis, Ilka Reichardt, Stefanie Koemeda, Jakub Jez, Magnus Nordborg, Jana Schwarzerova, Iro Pierides, Thomas Nägele, Wolfram Weckwerth
- Abstract
Acclimation and adaptation of metabolism to a changing environment are key processes for plant survival and reproductive success. In the present study, 241 natural accessions of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) were grown under two different temperature regimes, 16 °C and 6 °C, and growth parameters were recorded, together with metabolite profiles, to investigate the natural genome × environment effects on metabolome variation. The plasticity of metabolism, which was captured by metabolic distance measures, varied considerably between accessions. Both relative growth rates and metabolic distances were predictable by the underlying natural genetic variation of accessions. Applying machine learning methods, climatic variables of the original growth habitats were tested for their predictive power of natural metabolic variation among accessions. We found specifically habitat temperature during the first quarter of the year to be the best predictor of the plasticity of primary metabolism, indicating habitat temperature as the causal driver of evolutionary cold adaptation processes. Analyses of epigenome- and genome-wide associations revealed accession-specific differential DNA-methylation levels as potentially linked to the metabolome and identified FUMARASE2 as strongly associated with cold adaptation in Arabidopsis accessions. These findings were supported by calculations of the biochemical Jacobian matrix based on variance and covariance of metabolomics data, which revealed that growth under low temperatures most substantially affects the accession-specific plasticity of fumarate and sugar metabolism. Our findings indicate that the plasticity of metabolic regulation is predictable from the genome and epigenome and driven evolutionarily by Arabidopsis growth habitats.
- Organisation(s)
- Research Group Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Functional and Evolutionary Ecology
- External organisation(s)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Pflanzenphysiologie, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW), Max-Planck-Institut für molekulare Zellbiologie und Genetik, Vienna BioCenter , Brno University of Technology, Gregor Mendel-Gesellschaft-Wien, University of Vienna, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
- Journal
- Plant Physiology
- Volume
- 193
- Pages
- 980-1000
- No. of pages
- 21
- ISSN
- 0032-0889
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad298
- Publication date
- 10-2023
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 106057 Metabolomics, 106031 Plant physiology, 106005 Bioinformatics, 106002 Biochemistry
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physiology, Genetics, Plant Science
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/3e71775f-73d9-4473-9870-a0cfb89df5fa