Regulation of the plant metabolic network during stress

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In the field, plants have to cope with environmental fluctuations which at their extremes cause stress to the plant. Under such stress conditions, the growth and development of the plant can be severely retarded. In an agricultural context, such sub-optimal growth conditions cause significant lowering of yields and are a major cause of variations in agricultural productivity from year to year. Furthermore, global climate changes are likely to dramatically exacerbate this problem. There is thus a pressing need to develop new varieties of staple crops that are more tolerant of abiotic stress conditions. Many modern crop species are the product of extensive breeding designed to maximise the biomass of the harvested organs. However, traits such as stress tolerance that are present in the wild progenitor species are often lost during the breeding process. Successful reintroduction of such traits will be dependent upon a detailed understanding of their molecular basis. One fo the key components of the response of plants to stress conditions is adaptive change in their metabolism. Understanding the nature of these metabolic reconfigurations is vital if we are to successfully generate new stress-resistant varieties of crops. Accordingly, the aim of the proposed work is to dissect the regulation of the metabolic network during oxidative stress in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Particular attention will be paid to discriminating between changes that occur at the level of gene expression and those that operate directly on proteins (so-called post-translational changes).