This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: As climate change drives more frequent and intense heat waves, plants face growing challenges to survive and remain productive. Researchers at VIB, Ghent University, KU Leuven and their international collaborators have uncovered an evolutionary innovation that helps plants cope with high temperatures.
Published in Nature Plants, the study describes a molecular mechanism that helps plants stay cool under heat stress and could help researchers identify new ways to strengthen crop resilience. Unlike animals, plants cannot move to a cooler location when temperatures soar. Instead, they rely on built-in mechanisms to avoid overheating.
One of the most important cooling mechanisms involves tiny pores on the leaf surface called stomata. When temperatures increase, these pores can open, allowing water to evaporate and cool the leaf, much like sweating cools the human body. Scientists have long known that stomata help plants cope with heat, but many of the underlying molecular processes remained poorly understood.
Led by Professor Ive De Smet (VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology), the researchers—including the teams of Professor Kevin Verstrepen (VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology) and Professor Kris Gevaert (VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology)—discovered a previously unknown pathway that helps stomata open during heat stress. Central to this mechanism is a protein called UBP24. High temperatures trigger a modification that stabilizes UBP24.
This change stabilizes other proteins that keep stomata open and maintain the plant's natural cooling system. Understanding how plants respond to heat is becoming increasingly important as temperatures continue to rise worldwide. The newly discovered mechanism helps explain how plants keep their leaves cool under hot conditions.
While the research is fundamental in nature, it provides new insight into the biological processes that support heat resilience in plants and could eventually inform efforts to develop more climate-resilient crops. "As heat waves become more frequent and intense, understanding how plants naturally cope with high temperatures is more important than ever," De Smet said. "By uncovering one of the mechanisms plants use to regulate their cooling system, we gain new insights into the biological processes that help plants remain resilient under heat stress." By comparing UBP24 across dozens of plant species, the researchers discovered that a molecular switch enabling the protein to respond to heat appeared in vascular plants around the same time that actively controlled stomatal opening and closing evolved.
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