People can take off their clothes or move to a cooler place when it's hot, but plants cannot take off their clothes or move to another location. Yet, how do plants overcome the heat?
Domestic researchers have discovered the secret of how plants survive in high-temperature environments. A research team led by research fellow Hyesun Cho at the Plant System Engineering Research Center of the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB) announced on the 10th that they uncovered the secrets of how plants survive against high-temperature stress at the molecular level.
The DNA of all living organisms stores genetic information, which is copied and converted into a substance called RNA. This RNA contains necessary parts for protein synthesis (exons) mixed with unnecessary parts (introns), requiring a precise editing process to remove the unnecessary parts.
This RNA editing process is called "RNA splicing," and the molecular complex that performs the actual editing work is referred to as the "spliceosome." The spliceosome acts like a kind of tailor that accurately refines RNA.
The research team identified a key regulatory protein in the spliceosome, which is the RNA tailor known as PP2A B′η (beta prime eta). This protein plays a role in activating the spliceosome's operating switch when plants are exposed to high-temperature environments. It serves as a switch that allows plants to produce the necessary proteins in a timely manner under high temperatures.
The research team also conducted experiments by artificially removing this protein or, conversely, producing it in abundance. As a result, plants without this protein failed to germinate seeds under high temperatures and died easily, whereas plants with more of this protein thrived in high temperatures and had higher survival rates. This means that the research results can be utilized to develop crop varieties that grow well even in high-temperature environments.
Research fellow Cho stated, "The importance of developing heat-resistant crops will only increase due to climate change," adding, "The function of the 'PP2A B′η' protein that has been uncovered this time is expected to greatly contribute to developing climate-adaptive crop varieties and precision gene regulation technologies."
References
The Plant Cell (2025), DOI : https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koaf117