Wang Lihua, Xie Junyan, Mou Chenghong, Jiao Yuwei, Dou Yanhui, Zheng Huiqiong
Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Cell Dev Biol. 2022 Feb 1;9:813246. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.813246. eCollection 2021.
Spaceflight has an impact on the growth and development of higher plants at both the vegetative stage and reproductive stage. A great deal of information has been available on the vegetative stage in space, but relatively little is known about the influence of spaceflight on plants at the reproductive stage. In this study, we constructed transgenic plants expressing the flowering control gene, (), together with the green fluorescent protein gene () under control of a heat shock-inducible promoter (), by which we induced expression inflight through remote controlling heat shock (HS) treatment. Inflight photography data showed that induction of expression in transgenic plants in space under non-inductive short-day conditions could promote flowering and reduce the length of the inflorescence stem in comparison with that of wild-type plants under the same conditions. Whole-genome microarray analysis of gene expression changes in leaves of wild-type and these transgenic plants grown under the long-day and short-day photoperiod conditions in space indicated that the function of the photoperiod-related spaceflight responsive genes is mainly involved in protein synthesis and post-translation protein modulation, notably protein phosphorylation. In addition, changes of the circadian component of gene expression in response to spaceflight under different photoperiods indicated that roles of the circadian oscillator could act as integrators of spaceflight response and photoperiodic signals in Arabidopsis plants grown in space.
航天飞行对高等植物营养生长阶段和生殖生长阶段的生长与发育均有影响。关于植物在太空营养生长阶段的信息已有很多，但对于航天飞行对植物生殖生长阶段的影响却知之甚少。在本研究中，我们构建了在热激诱导型启动子（HSP18.2）控制下，同时表达开花控制基因CONSTANS（CO）和绿色荧光蛋白基因（GFP）的转基因植物，通过远程控制热激（HS）处理在飞行中诱导CO表达。飞行中的摄影数据显示，在非诱导性短日照条件下，太空转基因植物中CO表达的诱导可促进开花，并与相同条件下的野生型植物相比缩短花序茎的长度。对在太空长日照和短日照光周期条件下生长的野生型和这些转基因植物叶片中基因表达变化进行的全基因组微阵列分析表明，光周期相关的航天飞行响应基因的功能主要涉及蛋白质合成和翻译后蛋白质调节，尤其是蛋白质磷酸化。此外，不同光周期下航天飞行引起的基因表达昼夜节律成分的变化表明，昼夜节律振荡器在太空生长的拟南芥植物中可作为航天飞行响应和光周期信号的整合者。
