Plants May Have the Genetic Flexibility to Respond to Climate Change

A recent article reports on plant research conducted by a team of Brown University scientists.  Brown University scientists believe they have found the genetic signature that gives the common European plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, an advantage to surviving adverse climates.  For their research, data for 75,000 plants was collected, each of which existed in different climates that included the Arctic Circle and the Mediterranean coast; in addition, the total lifetime for individual plants was measured for one year.  The next step to this research was to identify the variations in the genome among regional plants.  For this, scientist looked to identify SNPs or single-nucleotide polymorphisms: SNPs result when a single nucleotide in a DNA sequence differs from members of the same species.  The team discovered that SNPs have plenty to do with the survival or fitness of the Arabidopsis plant.  For example, the SNPs that control fitness for the cool climate of Finland were unable to survive in the wet conditions of Spain, where the Arabidopsis plant has an SNP allele (SAG21) that allows it to withstand wet conditions.  The findings for this research are important because they give new insight into the evolutionary adaptation plants.