Combinatorial interaction network of transcriptomic and phenotypic responses to nitrogen and hormones in the Arabidopsis thaliana root.

Plants form the basis of the food webs that sustain animal life. Exogenous factors, such as nutrients and sunlight, and endogenous factors, such as hormones, cooperate to control both the growth and the development of plants. We assessed how Arabidopsis thaliana integrated nutrient and hormone signaling pathways to control root growth and development by investigating the effects of combinatorial treatment with the nutrients nitrate and ammonium; the hormones auxin, cytokinin, and abscisic acid; and all binary combinations of these factors. We monitored and integrated short-term genome-wide changes in gene expression over hours and long-term effects on root development and architecture over several days. Our analysis revealed trends in nutrient and hormonal signal crosstalk and feedback, including responses that exhibited logic gate behavior, which means that they were triggered only when specific combinations of signals were present. From the data, we developed a multivariate network model comprising the signaling molecules, the early gene expression modulation, and the subsequent changes in root phenotypes. This multivariate network model pinpoints several genes that play key roles in the control of root development and may help understand how eukaryotes manage multifactorial signaling inputs.

Integration of responses within and across Arabidopsis natural accessions uncovers loci controlling root systems architecture.

Phenotypic plasticity is presumed to be involved in adaptive change toward species diversification. We thus examined how candidate genes underlying natural variation across populations might also mediate plasticity within an individual. Our implementation of an integrative "plasticity space" approach revealed that the root plasticity of a single Arabidopsis accession exposed to distinct environments broadly recapitulates the natural variation "space." Genome-wide association mapping identified the known gene PHOSPHATE 1 (PHO1) and other genes such as Root System Architecture 1 (RSA1) associated with differences in root allometry, a highly plastic trait capturing the distribution of lateral roots along the primary axis. The response of mutants in the Columbia-0 background suggests their involvement in signaling key modulators of root development including auxin, abscisic acid, and nitrate. Moreover, genotype-by-environment interactions for the PHO1 and RSA1 genes in Columbia-0 phenocopy the root allometry of other natural variants. This finding supports a role for plasticity responses in phenotypic evolution in natural environments.