'Noisy' gene atlas to help explain how plants survive environmental change

30 January 2019

As parents of identical twins will tell you, they are never actually identical, even though they have the same genes. This is also true in the plant world. Now, new research by the University of Cambridge is helping to explain why ‘twin’ plants, with identical genes, grown in identical environments continue to display unique characteristics all of their own.

This is an important resource for studying how genetically identical plants survive fluctuating environments
- James Locke

Plant scientists at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University (SLCU) have built a gene expression atlas that maps the ‘noisy genes’ of genetically identical plants. The research, published today in Molecular Systems Biology, found that around 9% of the genes in otherwise identical plants are highly variable in the way that they behave. Interestingly, many of these highly variable (noisiest) genes help a plant respond to its environment, including genes involved in reacting to light, temperature, pathogens and nutrients.

This variation in gene behaviour could be useful in nature for populations of genetically similar plants to hedge against environmental stress such as drought, high salinity or extreme temperatures. This means that there will always a few plants in the population that are prepared to survive different stresses due to their variable gene behaviours (hedging their bets). But this variability can also be a problem, such as in agriculture where environments are more controlled and farmers want uniform crops that germinate and flower at the same time and respond equally to applications of fertilisers and water.

This is the first time that global levels of noise in gene expression has been measured in plants. The online open-access atlas (AraNoisy) will provide a resource for plant scientists around the world to study how gene expression variability influences plant survival and diversity within clonal populations. This important stepping-stone will help us to better understand how plants survive in fluctuating environments, and could eventually lead to further research in both plant conservation efforts and future crop development.

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Image: Spot the difference: Genetically identical thale cress plants grown under the exact same environmental conditions show significant visible differences. Could this be due to variable gene expression?

Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge

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