Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HIGHCODE (Unravelling high CO2-induced changes in stomatal development)
Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2025-03-31
Unlike animals, plants cannot move in response to changes in environmental conditions. Instead, they regulate their interaction with the outside world in order to optimize their fitness and survival. Plants regulate fundamental processes like gas exchange and regulation of inner temperature through pores located on the surface of the leaves, called stomata. They are similar to small mouths that open and close in response to different environmental stimuli. The HIGHCODE project aims to study how plants modify stomata number and disposition to adapt to different conditions, in a process called plasticity. In particular, the project goals are:
- Describing the different patterns stomata can have on the leaves surface in response to different environments.
- Understanding the main regulators of their environmental plasticity.
These results can help understanding how plants adapt to environment, and they can lead to improved agricultural and environmental applications useful to face challenges like climate change.
- Describing the different patterns stomata can have on the leaves surface in response to different environments.
- Understanding the main regulators of their environmental plasticity.
These results can help understanding how plants adapt to environment, and they can lead to improved agricultural and environmental applications useful to face challenges like climate change.
Leaf development has been studied in different developmental conditions, to assess how leaf cells behave and respond to usual or unusual growth conditions.
Those very same cells have been extracted and separated according to their localization in the leaf. When cells have different localization, it means they have different roles. Their behavior has been profiled so that different cells can be compared with each other, and their differences highlighted. In this way, putative regulators of developmental processes, such as stomatal development, have been identified. Their role is now better characterized in changing environmental conditions, to have a complete picture of the regulation on developmental plasticity.
Those very same cells have been extracted and separated according to their localization in the leaf. When cells have different localization, it means they have different roles. Their behavior has been profiled so that different cells can be compared with each other, and their differences highlighted. In this way, putative regulators of developmental processes, such as stomatal development, have been identified. Their role is now better characterized in changing environmental conditions, to have a complete picture of the regulation on developmental plasticity.
To understand how plants can modify their development to adapt to changing environmental conditions, different cells have been observed and profiled, and new regulators of leaf plasticity have been identified. These results could be used to find new solutions to current agricultural and environmental challenges.