Maintenance of abiotic stress memory in plants: Lessons learned from heat acclimation

The dynamic behavior of humans and even other animals highlights the existence and importance of memory. However, the static lifestyle of plants does not make it easy for people to realize that plants have memories, let alone their importance. Scientists have long observed that plants can preserve, to varying degrees, their experiences of environmental change, which alters their behaviors. These phenomena, such as vernalization (the plant's memory of winter), were considered exceptional cases. However, due to conceptual breakthroughs and experimental evidence, the more general phenomenon of priming/acclimation has come to be understood as a phenomenon that plants can remember. Priming/acclimation in plants refers to the alteration of subsequent behavior by previous experience, while memory refers to the retention of that capacity to alter. Memory should be closely related to the adaptation of plants to environmental changes. Understanding how plants maintain memory for adversity will help produce more adaptable crops to climate change. There are still many misunderstandings and problems in the literature on plant memory, especially the conceptual ambiguities and lack of easy-to-follow specifications. In addition to reviewing the critical advances in this field, this article contributes to the clarification of the concept of plant memory, clearly proposes the criteria for evaluating the abiotic memory of plants, analyzes the molecular mechanisms that maintain memory, and summarizes the currently known regulatory pathways and components involved in the maintenance of memory, using heat acclimation as an example.
Yee-yung Charng

 

Co-researchers:Suma Mitra, Shih-Jiun Yu