Closing gaps in plant chronobiology: from genome to proteome and from molecules to future geographies

Climate-change is causing a gradual northward shift in the growing regions of many crop plants. Previous research by us and others has found that plants use their circadian clock to sense changes in their geographical environment, such as differences in light intensity and quality to shape their growth and development. As climate change forces agriculture to expand into more Northern latitudes, we need to understand how the clock functions in different environments and how we can tweak it to engineer future-proof crops.

My newly established research group is attempting to decipher how plant circadian clock processes external light signals that change with latitude, building upon our recent discovery that the circadian clock is key to how plants respond to changes in twilight length. We are also researching how the circadian clock subsequently controls gene regulation to impact a variety of biological processes. We know from decades of fundamental research that the circadian clock in plants consists of highly interconnected transcriptional-translational feedback loops that control the expression of approximately 40% of all genes. However, little is yet known about how these rhythms in transcription translate to rhythmic protein expression.

By developing a new mass-spectrometry technique for quantitative proteomics, we are producing a circadian protein atlas in plants, providing unprecedented global insight into the timing of gene expression by the clock. We are now seeking to use such new proteomics approaches to characterize how plant chronobiology responds to environmental change with the aim of engineering latitudinal adaptability in crop plants.