A mathematical model predicts the response of plants to climate change

Scientists have created a mathematical model based on temperature-regulated processes in plants that can predict the response of agricultural crops to global warming.

The achievement is the work of specialists from the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) in Spain.

In this research, the fundamental role of the COP1 protein as a promoter of the growth of Arabidopsis plants in long days and high environmental temperatures and its interaction with other cellular factors has been identified. This discovery could help avoid the adverse effects of global climate change on summer crops.

The research team has been nurtured by the collaboration between the groups led by Salomé Prat and Saúl Ares at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB), belonging to the CSIC, and Pablo Catalán from the Interdisciplinary Group of Complex Systems (GISC) of the Carlos III of Madrid, Spain. The data obtained in the study have served to develop the aforementioned mathematical model, which relates the active levels of cellular factors regulated by light and temperature with the growth of the embryonic stem (the hypocotyl).

For Salomé Prat, a CSIC researcher currently at the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), the importance of this work goes beyond the characterization of the molecular bases of thermomorphogenesis. “Cultivated species show a very low genetic variability in terms of their ability to adapt to high ambient temperatures, which decrease their production. Here we show that more active forms of COP1 improve the tolerance to climate change of crops that require long days”, indicates the researcher.

Arabidopsis seedlings growing under in vitro culture conditions. (Image: Cristina Nieto)

Mathematics for summer crops

Plants adapt their development and morphology to the environmental conditions that surround them, fundamentally, the duration of the day and the ambient temperature. These two factors directly affect crop yields, hence the interest of the scientific community in their study.

When detecting an increase in temperature, the first response of the plant is the elongation of the hypocotyl, to facilitate the cooling of the leaves and minimize the damage caused by heat. “Using several mutant lines of Arabidopsis under various conditions of light and temperature, we were able to fit the parameters of the equations with the experimental data of hypocotyl length and one of the most interesting predictions of the model is the one that highlights that the maximum activity of COP1 has place during the day and at high temperatures”, explains Ares.

Temperature promotes plant growth and light inhibits it. In summer, when the days are longer and warmer, plants receive conflicting information and have to decide which signal to heed. “Until now, COP1 had been described as a fundamental factor for regulating growth in the dark, so this prediction was unusual,” says Cristina Nieto, first author of the work and currently a researcher at the National Institute of Agricultural Research and Technology and Alimentaria (INIA), attached to the CSIC. “We decided to simulate hypocotyl growth for a range of COP1 activity values ​​and experimentally verified the predictions obtained with mutants where COP1 did not work well or with plants that accumulated an excess of the protein. Thanks to this study, we now know that the COP1 protein is key to regulating the response to temperature on long days, that is, in summer.”

The study is titled “COP1 dynamics integrate conflicting seasonal light and thermal cues in the control of Arabidopsis elongation”. And it has been published in the academic journal Science Advances. (Source: CNB / CSIC)