There is a plant which is showing a good response I mean no stress physiological changes (photosynthetic efficiency, ETR etc) in so called stressed condition. How can we study what makes this plants adapted to this stress and making it fit to survive and grow as normal? What all possible reasons can be studied and compared what others don't have and this plant has?
Some reasons may be epigenetic changes, involvement of some signal molecules, but I am confused what else can be happening and how can we study?
I could suggest to think about some anatomical or morphological traits, eg. the structure of roots or stem (size of xylem vessels, total root lenght etc), structure of leaves (amount of wax covering, stomata density). What about the stomatal conductance?
Plant as whole organism responses to change in their environment (internal and external). But the same time, they have phenotypic plasticity. Biochemistry and physiology of plant will demonstrate a dynamics, in response to their environmental cues. In order to observe the changes, One need to look in the time frame of high responses to be detected by the sensitivity of the techniques.
What we say the adaptability is the case sanerio. Adaptability could be defined as achieving the balance after a perturbance in the environment. Plant will always have a tendency to achieve this in the range of phenotypic plasticity. The adaptability is a active process demand the consumption of energy and changes in the gene expression. Gene expression may change at all levels. Thus, the gene expression will lead to changes in metabolism and further more in physiology.
What Sunil Pal says is absolutely correct that gene expression will lead to changes in metabolism, this is similar to what I noticed in my research when I silence a particular gene that functioning in producing a metabolites, however triggers to induce to produce another metabolite that exits in the biosynthesis pathway. What i conclude here is that in order for the plant to survive, plant capable to form new metabolites that present in the particular pathway to compensate the reduction of the metabolites that its gene were silenced.
Proteomic and transcriptomic analysis can give you a good view of what molecular mechanisms are triggered by the plant to survive the stress. Compare two conditions : with/without stress, and find out new genes expression, and protein accumulation.
But plants have a more powerful tool to survive : secondary metabolism. According to the type of stress you're looking at, metabolites will be produced to control cell/plant physiology. In that case, gene activation/protein production will just allow to activate/enhance a metabolic pathway. Finally, the secondary metabolite is the true factor permitting the plant to survive.
This statement is true for plant/microbe interactions, and some abiotic stress like dryness. For example some grapevine cultivars are greatly resistant to fungi just because one of secondary metabolic pathways is highly activated, when compared to other cultivars.
These particularities are very precious for genetic plant breeding.
Hope it helped. Regards.
Dear Amit,
First of all, if the plant is not responding to a particular environment the first hypothesis is that such environment is NOT stressing to it. Stress is NOT an a priori condition, stress is a plant response to specific environmental conditions that impair somehow its organizations as a whole. Second, there is NO a single indicator in order to evaluate a possible stress situation. It is necessary a full multivariate approach. Please, if you want, see my paper attached about such questions. Best regards,Gustavo.
Hello Sunil, and umaiyal, thanks for nice suggestions..
Hello Bertrand, I am following expression of some genes and some proteomic studies too.. I am hoping to get some clues about this organims..
Hello Gustavo,
First of all thanks for nice paper, I ll read this one..
May be this plant is not stressed but the condition is stressful for most of the plants living in the same environment. so I am considering the adaptation of my plant to this particular stress.
Consider whether your plant is native or native then some stresses are under-observed because if short span of research. Did you see phonology? There are examples of increased flowers and fruits in stressed environment. Again their secondary metabolite is further strong in stressed environment which is morphologically unobservable. So you can also see composition of secondary metabolite in your sample and compare with reference.
I think Gustavo Souza · has suggested a nice approach for your study.....be confident and proceed on your research
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