@phdthesis{Qin2022,
  author    = {Qin, Miaojing},
  title     = {The role of heat shock proteins (HSP23s and HSP70-4) for heat stress memory in plants},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {138},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Heat is a significant climatic condition that threatens crop growth and survival. Extreme temperature occurrences in nature are becoming more severe, more frequent and longer-lasting, all of which have deleterious repercussions for agricultural production. As a result, it is critical to learn more about the mechanisms that lead to increased heat tolerance in plants. To endure and survive, higher plants have evolved complex mechanisms to respond to various amounts of heat stress. Plants have a thermal tolerance that permits them to survive rapid and dramatic temperature rises for a limited time. Plants can also be primed to withstand heat stress (HS) that would otherwise be lethal by exposing them to short, moderate, and non-lethal HS (referred to as a priming stimulus) before being exposed to severe HS. A prepared acquired thermotolerance in primed plants can be maintained for a long time under optimal circumstances, implying that plants can store information during this period. Several studies have shown that acquired thermotolerance (thermopriming) refers to the increased resistance of cells, tissues, and organisms to elevated temperatures after prior heat exposure. Maintenance of acquired thermotolerance (thermomemory) is associated with the synthesis of specialized stress proteins involved in cellular protection and accelerated tissue repair, such as heat shock proteins (HSPs). Recent studies showed a main role of heat shock proteins for turnover of protein quality components, e.g. HSP21 in the chloroplast in the regulation of thermomemory. As an important organelle, mitochondrial function is critical for plant cell responses to heat. However, it is still unknown what the molecular and physiological involvement of HSPs is in mitochondrial function and thermomemory. In our study, we showed that thermopriming induces transcript and protein levels of two mitochondrial small heat shock proteins, HSP23.5 (AT5G51440) and HSP23.6 (AT4G25200), which last for 2-3 days throughout the thermomemory phase. The morphological analysis of HSP23.5/6 transgenic plants demonstrated HSP23.5/6 function redundantly in heat stress. We showed that hsp23.5/6 double knockout plants had abnormalities in thermomemory at the seedling stage, and that mature hsp23.5/6 4 plants are more sensitive to both basal thermotolerance and thermomemory. Heat treatment significantly impacted the respiration rate of hsp23.5/6 seedlings compared to WT, indicating mitochondrial dysfunction dependent on HSP23.5 and HSP23.6. In addition, we tested and confirmed the chaperone activity of HSP23.6 toward the model substrate protein malate dehydrogenase (MDH) in vitro, indicating that HSP23.6 potentially contributes to the maintenance of cellular viability. Furthermore, we discovered a novel HSP23.6 client protein, CIB22, a mitochondrial complex-I subunit protein. According to experimental data (BiFC and Co-IP), HSP23.6 and CIB22 interact in plant cells. We also identified a heat response phenotype in the cib22 mutant compared to WT, as well as CIB22 protein degradation in the hsp23.5/6 mutant when exposed to heat. Our findings suggest that the two mitochondrial-localized heat shock proteins play a role in thermotolerance, presumably by influencing mitochondrial function and structure. More broadly, to identify novel genetic components associated with thermomemory in plants, we performed proteome profiling for Arabidopsis WT (Col-0) seedlings during thermomemory. Multiple time point samples of priming and triggering with controls were collected and analyzed to reveal the dynamic proteome changes during the memory phase in Arabidopsis cells. Among the top memory-associated proteins, we discovered that HSP70-4 was significantly upregulated after priming and remains high (at least 2-fold) for the next four days. By morphologically analyzing their heat stress behaviors, we were able to verify that HSP70-4 is involved in plant heat stress response. More intriguingly, we discovered that following priming, HSP70-4-GFP creates cytosolic foci that persist for a few days into the recovery period. We propose that these foci are linked to SGs due to cycloheximide (CHX) repressing the GFP-foci signal when exposed to heat. These findings indicate an HSP70-4-mediated transcription and translation control link (module) during basal thermotolerance and thermomemory, as well as its potential role(s) in heat stress response. To summarize, our research provides new insight into the role of heat shock proteins in controlling heat stress tolerance and memory.},
  language  = {de}
}