Abstract
Plant development is remarkably plastic but how precisely can the plant customize its form to specific environments? When the plant adjusts its development to different environments, related traits can change in a coordinated fashion, such that two traits co-vary across many genotypes. Alternatively, traits can vary independently, such that a change in one trait has little predictive value for the change in a second trait. To characterize such "tunability" in developmental plasticity, we carried out a detailed phenotypic characterization of complex root traits among 96 accessions of the model Arabidopsis thaliana in two nitrogen environments. The results revealed a surprising level of independence in the control of traits to environment - a highly tunable form of plasticity. We mapped genetic architecture of plasticity using genome-wide association studies and further used gene expression analysis to narrow down gene candidates in mapped regions. Mutants in genes implicated by association and expression analysis showed precise defects in the predicted traits in the predicted environment, corroborating the independent control of plasticity traits. The overall results suggest that there is a pool of genetic variability in plants that controls traits in specific environments, with opportunity to tune crop plants to a given environment.
Description
2013 Gifford et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Publisher
PLOS
Date of publication
Fall 9-5-2013
Language
english
Persistent identifier
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4370
Document Type
Article
Recommended Citation
Gifford, Miriam L.; Banta, Joshua A.; Katari, Manpreet S.; Hulsmans, Jo; Chen, Lisa; Ristova, Daniela; Tranchina, Daniel; Purugganan, Michael D.; Coruzzi, Gloria M.; and Birnbaum, Kenneth D., "Plasticity Regulators Modulate Specific Root Traits in Discrete Nitrogen Environments" (2013). Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations. Paper 28.
http://hdl.handle.net/10950/4370