Tài liệu Báo cáo khoa học: Shaped by the environment – adaptation in plants Meeting report based on

REVIEW ARTICLE

Shaped by the environment – adaptation in plants

Meeting report based on the presentations at the FEBS Workshop

‘Adaptation Potential in Plants’ 2009 (Vienna, Austria)

Maria F. Siomos

Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria

Introduction

Two hundred years after the birth of the British natu￾ralist and writer Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

(Fig. 1A), and 150 years after his seminal publication

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selec￾tion, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the

Struggle for Life [1], Darwin’s theory of evolution, in

which natural selection acting on heritable variation

in populations is responsible for biological diversity,

has been widely accepted by biologists. As written by

Theodosius Dobzhansky, ‘Nothing in biology makes

sense, except in the light of evolution’ [2]. The magni￾tude of Darwin’s insight into evolutionary processes

can only be fully grasped when reflecting that Darwin

was aware of neither Gregor Mendel’s laws of inheri￾tance [3] (which went all but unnoticed until their

rediscovery at the turn of the 20th century) nor of

what the physical basis underlying variation within

populations might be. Since the discovery of the

structure of DNA [4] and the ability to analyse DNA

by sequencing and other molecular methods, we now

know that genetic variation and epigenetic mecha￾nisms form the basis of phenotypic variation. It is,

however, only recently that the necessary tools have

been developed to study the evolutionary process

in action. It is of particular interest from both a

scientific and societal perspective to understand the

Keywords

adaptation; Arabidopsis; climate change;

Darwin; ecology; environment; evolution;

genomic variability; speciation; stress

Correspondence

M. F. Siomos, Gregor Mendel Institute of

Molecular Plant Biology, Austrian Academy

of Sciences, Dr. Bohr-Gasse 3, 1030 Vienna,

Austria

Fax: +43 1 79044 23 9101

Tel: +43 1 79044 9101

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: http://www.gmi.oeaw.ac.at

(Received 25 May 2009, revised 18 June

2009, accepted 25 June 2009)

doi:10.1111/j.1742-4658.2009.07170.x

As sessile organisms that are unable to escape from inhospitable environ￾ments, plants are at the mercy of the elements. Nonetheless, plants have

managed to adapt, evolve and survive in some of the harshest conditions

on earth. The FEBS Workshop ‘Adaptation Potential in Plants’, held at

the Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology, Vienna, Austria

from 19 to 21 March 2009, provided a forum (including 18 invited talks,

8 selected short talks and 69 posters) for about 100 plant biologists from

32 countries, working in the diverse fields of genetics, epigenetics, stress

signalling, and growth and development, to come together and discuss

adaptation potential in plants at all its levels.

Abbreviations

BCAA, branched chain amino acid; BCMA, branched chain methionine allocation; CAMTA, calmodulin-binding transcription activator; FLC,

FLOWERING LOCUS C; FRI, FRIGIDA; HTH, HOTHEAD; QTL, quantitative trait locus; R, Resistance; siRNA, small interfering RNA.

FEBS Journal 276 (2009) 4705–4714 ª 2009 The Author Journal compilation ª 2009 FEBS 4705