Perception and processing of stress signals by plant mitochondria.

In the course of their life, plants continuously experience a wide range of unfavourable environmental conditions in the form of biotic and abiotic stress factors. The perception of stress via various organelles and rapid, tailored cellular responses are essential for the establishment of plant stress resilience. Mitochondria as the biosynthetic sites of energy equivalents in the form of ATP-provided in order to enable a multitude of biological processes in the cell-are often directly impacted by external stress factors.

Epigenetic alterations in bioaccumulators of cadmium: Lessons from mammalian kidneys and plants.

Faced with unpredictable changes in global weather patterns, release and redistribution of metals through land erosion and water movements add to the increasing use of metals in industrial activities causing high levels of environmental pollution and concern to the health of all living organisms. Cadmium is released into the environment by smelting and mining, entering the food chain via contaminated soils, water, and phosphate fertilizers. Bioaccumulation of cadmium in plants represents the first major step into the human food chain and contributes to toxicity of several organs, especially the kidneys, where biomagnification of cadmium occurs over decades of exposure.

ERFVII-controlled hypoxia responses are in part facilitated by MEDIATOR SUBUNIT 25 in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Flooding impairs plant growth through oxygen deprivation, which activates plant survival and acclimation responses. Transcriptional responses to low oxygen are generally associated with the activation of group VII ETHYLENE-RESPONSE FACTOR (ERFVII) transcription factors. However, the exact mechanisms and molecular components by which ERFVII factors initiate gene expression are not fully elucidated.

'Against all floods': plant adaptation to flooding stress and combined abiotic stresses.

Current climate change brings with it a higher frequency of environmental stresses, which occur in combination rather than individually leading to massive crop losses worldwide. In addition to, for example, drought stress (low water availability), also flooding (excessive water) can threaten the plant, causing, among others, an energy crisis due to hypoxia, which is responded to by extensive transcriptional, metabolic and growth-related adaptations. While signalling during flooding is relatively well understood, at least in model plants, the molecular mechanisms of combinatorial flooding stress responses, for example, flooding simultaneously with salinity, temperature stress and heavy metal stress or sequentially with drought stress, remain elusive.

Endoplasmic reticulum-bound ANAC013 factor is cleaved by RHOMBOID-LIKE 2 during the initial response to hypoxia in .

Aerobic reactions are essential to sustain plant growth and development. Impaired oxygen availability due to excessive water availability, e.g.