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Plant Thermomorphogenic Adaptation to Global Warming

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Abstract

Plants are capable of actively adapting to a variety of environmental signals by adjusting physiological activities, growth behaviors, and architectural morphology. Temperatures are one of the major environmental factors that extensively affect plant growth and developmental processes. A suite of signaling mediators and underlying molecular mechanisms governing plant adaptation to stressful high and low temperatures have been explored through molecular genetic approaches and global-scale gene expression screening in recent decades. Notably, it is known that ambient temperature changes even by a few degrees also profoundly affect plant developmental and morphological traits. In particular, in response to ambient warm temperatures, plants exhibit distinct morphological adjustments, such as stem elongation, increase of leaf hyponasty, and formation of small, slender leaves, which are collectively termed thermomorphogenesis. Plant thermomorphogenesis is intimately associated with global warming, which represents a steady increase of the average global temperatures and is emerging as a world-wide ecological concern because of its impacts on plant vegetation and crop productivity. In this minireview, we summarize recent progress in the field and discuss practical insights into how plants cope with temperature changes to sustain optimal growth and adaptive behaviors.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Leaping Research (NRF-2018R1A2A1A19020840) Program provided by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) and the Next-Generation BioGreen 21 Program (PJ013134) provided by the Rural Development Administration of Korea. Y.-J.P. was partially supported by Global Ph.D. Fellowship Program through NRF (NRF-2016H1A2A1906534).

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  1. June-Hee Lee and Jae Young Kim contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Korea

    June-Hee Lee, Jae Young Kim, Young-Joon Park & Chung-Mo Park

  2. Department of Biotechnology and Kumho Life Science Laboratory, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, 61186, Korea

    Jeong-Il Kim

  3. Plant Genomics and Breeding Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, 08826, Korea

    Chung-Mo Park

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  1. June-Hee Lee
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CMP and YJP designed the manuscript. CMP, YJP, JHL, and JYK wrote the manuscript. J.-I Kim provided scientific discussion. All the authors agreed on the contents of the paper and critically evaluated the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Young-Joon Park or Chung-Mo Park.

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Lee, JH., Kim, J.Y., Kim, JI. et al. Plant Thermomorphogenic Adaptation to Global Warming. J. Plant Biol. 63, 1–9 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12374-020-09232-y

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