title: Drought, metabolites, and Arabidopsis natural variation: a promising combination for understanding adaptation to water-limited environments.
abstract: Drought elicits substantial changes in plant metabolism and it remains a challenge to determine which of these changes represent adaptive responses and which of them are merely neutral effects or even symptoms of damage. Arabidopsis primarily uses low water potential/dehydration avoidance strategies to respond to water limitation. The large variation in evolved stress responses among accessions can be a powerful tool to identify ecologically important and adaptive traits; however, collection of relevant phenotype data under controlled water stress is often a limiting factor. Quantitative genetics of Arabidopsis has great potential to find the genes underlying variation in drought-affected metabolic traits, for example proline metabolism, as well as overall adaptation.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan. paulv@gate.sinica.edu.tw
authors.forename: Paul E
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Verslues
authors.forename: Thomas E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Juenger
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000235:genetics*; D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D055864:Droughts; D004777:Environment; D017343:Genes, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D014644:Genetic Variation; D008954:Models, Biological; D010641:Phenotype; D011392:Proline / Q000032:analysis / Q000378:metabolism; D013696:Temperature; D014867:Water / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D014867:Water; D011392:Proline