Alternative splicing and climate-resilient crops.
Tan Y, Ye S, Zhang A, Chen LL, Song JM
Summary
8.1/10Plants naturally reprogram their genes to handle heat, drought, and salt stress—a process scientists can now harness to breed tougher crops. This discovery could help maintain stable food supplies as climate change intensifies.
Key Findings
Abiotic stresses extensively reshape plant splicing landscapes, altering expression of genes encoding heat shock transcription factors, calcium signaling components, and splicing regulators
Alternative splicing provides molecular plasticity that enables rapid environmental stress responses in plants
Alternative splicing can be manipulated in crop breeding programs to develop climate-resilient varieties with improved drought, heat, and salinity tolerance
Original Abstract
Abiotic stress severely restricts plant growth and crop yield, potentially impacting food security during climate shifts. Alternative splicing (AS), a widely conserved gene regulatory mechanism tightly coupled to transcription, impacts stress responses by altering protein levels and function. Such molecular plasticity supports rapid environmental responses. Advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies have enabled genome-wide AS profiling, revealing that abiotic stresses extensively reshape splicing landscapes, affecting transcripts encoding heat shock transcription factors, calcium signaling components, and splicing regulators. Here, we synthesize current knowledge on plant AS mechanisms, advances in AS detection, and stress-induced AS regulation under temperature fluctuations, drought, and salinity. We further discuss prospects for manipulating AS in breeding stress-resistant crops, providing a paradigm for genetic improvement with relevance beyond stress resistance.