CRAG Researchers Discover Protein that Confers Drought Tolerance to Plants

Researchers from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Economics (CRAG) led by Núria Sánchez-Coll have discovered the exclusive location of AtMC3 protein in the plant vascular system and its role in drought tolerance in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana.

AtMC3 is a protein of the metacaspase family. The research team discovered that increased levels of AtMC3 confer enhanced tolerance to severe water scarcity without affecting plant yield. The research team found that AtMC3 is exclusively located in the plant vascular system's phloem, which distributes the soluble organic compounds from the leaves during photosynthesis to the rest of the plant. AtMC3 is found in a particular cell type called companion cells, which metabolically support the main phloem transport cells.

In this study, researchers found that plants without AtMC3 are less sensitive to the stress hormone abscisic acid (ABA), and hence their ability to cope with drought stress is diminished. When the researchers increased the levels of AtMC3, plants showed an increased survival rate and could maintain their photosynthetic capacity in water-scarce conditions. This shows that AtMC3 alone can confer enhanced drought tolerance. More importantly, the altered levels of this protein did not cause any detrimental changes in plant growth. "This is a key finding to be able to fine-tune early drought responses at the whole plant level without affecting growth or yield in crops," says Eugenia Pitsili, first author of the study and former CRAG researcher, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher at VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology in Belgium.

For more details, read the news article in CRAG News.