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，或者把暖气调高。植物不能。它们不能移动，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都有一个共同的问题，即冻结细胞是非常有害的。如果这还不够糟糕的话，在气温甚至还没有降到冰点之前，植物还面临着另一个更具体的问题。植物的定义是，它通过光合作用利用光产生自己的食物。利用如此强大的能源(阳光)并不是没有风险。这种能量必须非常有效地与产糖结合在一起，否则这种能量会对植物细胞造成损害(这就是众所周知的光氧化胁迫)。当温度下降时，光能的有效耦合变得困难，这种能量会产生高度活性的化学物质(活性氧物种，作用就像漂白剂)，从而破坏和杀死植物。植物是如何应对这些问题的？植物有一系列不同的基因，它们可以有反应地开启和关闭这些基因，以帮助它们应对环境的变化。我们知道，当气温下降时，植物会启动许多基因，这些基因的目的是保护植物免受霜冻损害的后果。我们已经发现了一组基因，这些基因在黑暗中被植物开启，但在寒冷的温度下被关闭。我们的研究旨在发现植物是如何做到这一点的，以及这样做的好处是什么。我们将在这些基因的DNA中寻找关键模式(序列)，当光线水平或温度下降时，这些模式(序列)充当开/关开关。通过在这些交换机制中引入人工更改并监控其影响，我们将更多地了解交换机的工作原理。然后，我们可以研究基因的开启和关闭对植物在低温和霜冻条件下应对生命的能力的影响。

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.