A subcellular view on plant metabolic regulation

The major aim of the project is to better understand plant adaptation to a changing climate. This project combines key results of our recent studies to eventually resolve a so far neglected component of stress adaptation: natural variation of subcellular metabolic compartmentation as a response to stress conditions. According to our recent results, plants have evolved strategies for the tight regulation of subcellular metabolism to adapt to a changing environment. To investigate this hypothesis we have developed a rapid non-aqueous fractionation technique (NAF) in combination with metabolite and protein profiling and demonstrated that subcellular compartmentation plays a critical role in plant stress acclimation and adaptation. More importantly, these subcellular compartmentation strategies show differences in different ecotypes of Arabidopsis thaliana pointing to the fact that natural genetic variation is the basis for these different biochemical strategies for stress adaptation. Currently, it is not possible to reliably predict these strategies from the genome sequence . In previous studies we have shown that regulation of the interface of primary and secondary metabolism allows the in situ classification of metabolic phenotypes of natural populations of Arabidopsis thaliana within geographically contiguous sampling sites. Based on these findings and applying available genome sequence information on natural Arabidopsis accessions, our project now aims to develop context-specific genome-scale metabolic networks by considering their subcellular compartmentation under common garden growth conditions. Networks will be reconstructed to a subcellular level and metabolomics, proteomics and transcriptomics analysis will be performed using our previously developed protocol for subcellular fractionation. This will reveal a compendium of metabolic trajectories on a subcellular level, which will essentially su pport the classification of natural Arabidopsis accessions in context of their geographical origin and uncover fundamental molecular mechanisms of plants to adapt to a changing climate .