Discoveries

For more than 25 years, the American Southwest has faced the severe social and economic consequences of a megadrought, including a $1.1 billion agricultural loss in California in 2021 alone. New research led by Joseph Ecker, PhD, provides a roadmap that could help researchers engineer crop varieties that get us out of this agricultural rut. 

The team profiled nearly a million cells from the leaves of Arabidopsis thaliana, a small flowering plant that serves as a laboratory stand-in for important crops like corn, wheat, and rice. They measured changes in gene expression in these cells across different drought levels and leaf developmental stages and compiled the data in a public atlas. The atlas revealed that drought conditions accelerate leaf aging, but a specific gene could be used to rescue leaf growth during drought.

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Plants can’t move to escape the heat like humans can—they are forced to adapt. As temperatures fluctuate, one key survival strategy is the ability of roots to keep growing, allowing plants to access water and nutrients farther away in the soil. Lucia Strader, PhD, asked how plants sense temperature and translate it into growth. She found her answer in a familiar plant hormone: auxin.

Auxin is at the center of plant growth, governing everything from cell elongation to root and stem development. But it’s not the center of this story—instead, the latest research found auxin’s partner proteins serve as internal plant “thermostats.” These partner proteins directly sense temperature, then change genetic programs to direct root growth accordingly. The findings could be used in future efforts to engineer plants that can withstand more extreme temperatures.

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