CEMB Future Leaders: “The place of plant chromatin in sensing mechanical stress”

Abstract:

Plants have remarkable capacities to react and adapt to changing environmental conditions and

display morphological flexibility. In order to maintain the balance in morphogenesis and developmental

robustness and, simultaneously, assure the responses to internal as well as external stimuli, the expression

of multiple genes should be adjusted in a flexible manner. The dynamic regulation of gene expression is

aided by the epigenetic chromatin modifications. Such modifications also contribute to activation of the

mechanosensitive genes expression thus underlining the existing link between the mechanosensing and

chromatin organization.

In the growing tissues there are naturally present patterns of forces. Surrounded and connected by

the cell walls, plant cells have to cope with the occurring mechanical stress without resolving to cell

intercalation. For example, the cells in the saddle-shaped organ–meristem boundary domain, formed by the

emergence of a new aerial organ at the shoot apex, get highly compressed. This is accompanied by the

deformation of the nuclei and major chromatin rearrangements within these cells, demonstrating that

mechanical forces have a strong and direct impact on plant chromatin in a tissue context.

I believe, gaining more detailed knowledge of the roles of plant chromatin in reactions to mechanical

stress shall greatly help our understanding of how environmental signals are sensed by the plants and

further integrated into their morphogenesis.