In recent years, advancements have been made to understand how plants adapt to low temperature stress on a molecular level. Unlike the responses to heat shock, very few similarities are known for the adaptation of prokaryotes and eukaryotes to low temperature stress. Prokaryotic response to low temperature stress has been extensively studied in the model bacterium Escherichia coli, and is characterized by the predominant accumulation of small molecular weight nucleic acid binding proteins (cold shock proteins). It was recently learned that both wheat and Arabidopsis contain cold-responsive cold shock domain proteins. Due to the wide availability of genetic and molecular resources for the model plant Arabidopsis, this project is designed to determine the function of its four individual cold shock domain proteins. Despite the fact that the cold shock domain is the most highly conserved nucleic acid binding domain known, the characterization of cold shock domain proteins in the Plant Kingdom is surprisingly sparse. Collectively, results from this project will allow the investigators to propose functional roles for the cold shock domain protein family in plants and will furthermore allow them to determine how plant cold shock domain proteins contribute to low temperature stress.
Broader Impacts of Proposed Research: The proposed project is designed to educate undergraduate and graduate students and a post-doctoral fellow. Involvement in the project will provide training in molecular biology, plant physiology, microscopy and protein structural determination. In addition, the international collaborative project with Japanese scientists will offer the students opportunities to interact with scientists from a unique cultural and scientific atmosphere. Since there are very limited experimental data for this protein family in plants, a tremendous opportunity exists to advance this area. All scientific findings will be broadly disseminated to the scientific and public communities. It is hoped that results from this project may lead to a more comprehensive study of how plants adapt to low temperature. Cumulatively, abiotic stress such as temperature extremes, drought, and salinity account for a substantial reduction in the potential for crop productivity. Any advancement in one of these areas has the potential to have wide implications for society; such as the extension of growing seasons and expansion of growing regions into more fertile lands. It is hoped that knowledge gained from this study may lead us closer towards understanding the complexities of plant adaptation to low temperatures.
