Cross-talk between cold and light signalling pathways in Arabidopsis thaliana.

当气温下降时，我们可以穿更多的衣服，或者把暖气打开。植物不能。他们不能动，所以必须面对寒冷的冲击。植物面临的主要问题之一是它们与所有其他细胞生命共同面临的问题，即细胞的冷冻非常有害。如果这还不够糟糕的话，在温度下降到冰点之前，植物还有另一个更具体的问题。植物的定义是它利用光通过光合作用产生自己的食物。利用如此强大的能量（阳光）并非没有风险。能量必须非常有效地耦合到生产糖，否则能量可能会对植物细胞造成损害（这被称为光氧化应激）。当温度下降时，光能的有效耦合变得困难，并且能量可以产生高活性化学物质（活性氧物质，其作用类似于漂白剂），可以破坏和杀死植物。植物如何科普这些问题？植物有一个不同的基因库，它们可以响应地打开和关闭这些基因，以帮助它们科普环境的变化。我们知道，当气温下降时，植物会启动许多基因，其目的是保护植物免受霜冻的影响。我们已经发现了一组基因，它们在植物对黑暗的反应中被打开，但在寒冷的温度下被关闭。我们的研究旨在发现植物如何做到这一点以及这样做的好处。我们将在这些基因的DNA中寻找关键模式（序列），当光照水平或温度下降时，这些基因就像开关一样。通过在这些开关机制中引入人为变化并监测其效果，我们将更多地了解开关的工作原理。然后，我们可以检查基因的开启和关闭对植物科普低温和霜冻条件下生活的能力的影响。

When temperatures drop, we can put more clothes on, or turn the heating up. Plants can't. They can't move, so have to face the brunt of being cold. One of the major problems plants face is one they share with all other cellular life, namely that freezing of cells is very damaging. If that weren't bad enough, before temperatures even drop as low as freezing point, plants have another more specific problem. The definition of a plant is that it produces its own food, using light, via photosynthesis. The harnessing of such potent energy (sunlight), doesn't come without risks. The energy must be very efficiently coupled to producing sugar, or else the energy can cause damage to the plant cells (this is known as photooxidative stress). When temperatures drop, the efficient coupling of light energy becomes difficult, and the energy can produce highly reactive chemicals (reactive oxygen species, which act like bleach) that can damage and kill the plants. How do plants cope with these problems? Plants have a repertoire of different genes which they can switch on and off responsively to help them cope with changes in their environment. We know that when the temperature drops, a plant will switch on many genes whose purpose is to protect it from the consequences of frost damage. We have discovered a set of genes that are switched on by the plant in response to darkness but switched off during cold temperatures. Our research is aimed at discovering how the plant does this and what the benefit is of doing so. We will be looking for key patterns (sequences) in the DNA of these genes, which act as on/off switches when light levels or the temperature drop. By introducing artificial changes into these switching mechanisms and monitoring their effects, we will learn more about how the switches work. We can then examine the effect that switching the genes on and off has on the plant's ability to cope with life at low temperatures and in frost conditions.