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1. Rapid systemic responses of Arabidopsis to waterlogging stress

   https://doi.org/10.1093/plphys/kiad433  

   Peláez-Vico, María Ángeles; Tukuli, Adama; Singh, Pallav; Mendoza-Cózatl, David G; Joshi, Trupti; Mittler, Ron (August 2023, Plant Physiology)

   Abstract Waterlogging stress (WLS) negatively impacts the growth and yield of crops resulting in heavy losses to agricultural production. Previous studies have revealed that WLS induces a systemic response in shoots that is partially dependent on the plant hormones ethylene and abscisic acid. However, the role of rapid cell-to-cell signaling pathways, such as the reactive oxygen species (ROS) and calcium waves, in systemic responses of plants to WLS is unknown at present. Here, we reveal that an abrupt WLS treatment of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants growing in peat moss triggers systemic ROS and calcium wave responses and that the WLS-triggered ROS wave response of Arabidopsis is dependent on the ROS-generating RESPIRATORY BURST OXIDASE HOMOLOG D (RBOHD), calcium-permeable channels GLUTAMATE-LIKE RECEPTOR 3.3 and 3.6 (GLR3.3 and GLR3.6), and aquaporin PLASMA MEMBRANE INTRINSIC PROTEIN 2;1 (PIP2;1) proteins. We further show that WLS is accompanied by a rapid systemic transcriptomic response that is evident as early as 10 min following waterlogging initiation, includes many hypoxia-response transcripts, and is partially dependent on RBOHD. Interestingly, the abrupt WLS of Arabidopsis resulted in the triggering of a rapid hydraulic wave response and the transient opening of stomata on leaves. In addition, it induced in plants a heightened state of tolerance to a subsequent submergence stress. Taken together, our findings reveal that the initiation of WLS in plants is accompanied by rapid systemic physiological and transcriptomic responses that involve the ROS, calcium, and hydraulic waves, as well as the induction of hypoxia acclimation mechanisms in systemic tissues. 

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2. Meta‐analysis of the coral environmental stress response: Acropora corals show opposing responses depending on stress intensity

   https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15535  

   Dixon, Groves; Abbott, Evelyn; Matz, Mikhail (July 2020, Molecular Ecology)

   Abstract As climate change progresses, reef‐building corals must contend more often with suboptimal conditions, motivating a need to understand coral stress response. Here, we test the hypothesis that there is a stereotyped transcriptional response that corals enact under all stressful conditions, functionally characterized by downregulation of growth, and activation of cell death, response to reactive oxygen species, immunity, and protein folding and degradation. We analyse RNA‐seq and Tag‐Seq data from 14 previously published studies and supplement them with four new experiments involving different stressors, totaling over 600 gene expression profiles from the genusAcropora. Contrary to expectations, we found not one, but two distinct types of response. The type A response was observed under all kinds of high‐intensity stress, was correlated between independent projects and was functionally consistent with the hypothesized stereotyped response. The consistent correlation between projects, irrespective of stress type, supports the type A response as the general coral environmental stress response (ESR), a blanket solution to severely stressful conditions. The distinct type B response was observed under lower intensity stress and was more variable among studies. Unexpectedly, at the level of individual genes and functional categories, the type B response was broadly opposite the type A response. Finally, taking advantage of the breadth of the data set, we present contextual annotations for previously unannotated genes based on consistent stress‐induced differences across independent projects. 

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3. Nucleolar stress in Drosophila neuroblasts, a model for human ribosomopathies

   https://doi.org/10.1242/bio.046565  

   Baral, Sonu Shrestha; Lieux, Molly E.; DiMario, Patrick J. (April 2020, Biology Open)
4. The computation of local stress in ab initio molecular simulations

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-651X/ab2b8a  

   Li, Xiantao (August 2019, Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering)
5. Emergence of Escherichia coli critically buckled motile helices under stress

   https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809374115  

   Phan, Trung V.; Morris, Ryan J.; Lam, Ho Tat; Hulamm, Phuson; Black, Matthew E.; Bos, Julia; Austin, Robert H. (November 2018, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)

   Bacteria under external stress can reveal unexpected emergent phenotypes. We show that the intensely studied bacteriumEscherichia colican transform into long, highly motile helical filaments poized at a torsional buckling criticality when exposed to minimum inhibitory concentrations of several antibiotics. While the highly motile helices are physically either right- or left-handed, the motile helices always rotate with a right-handed angular velocity $\overrightarrow{\omega }$, which points in the same direction as the translational velocity ${\overrightarrow{v}}_T$of the helix. Furthermore, these helical cells do not swim by a “run and tumble” but rather synchronously flip their spin $\overrightarrow{\omega }$and thus translational velocity—backing up rather than tumbling. By increasing the translational persistence length, these dynamics give rise to an effective diffusion coefficient up to 20 times that of a normalE. colicell. Finally, we propose an evolutionary mechanism for this phenotype’s emergence whereby the increased effective diffusivity provides a fitness advantage in allowing filamentous cells to more readily escape regions of high external stress. 

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