BACKGROUND Human activity has a profound effect on the global environment and caused frequent occurrence of climatic fluctuations. To survive, plants need to adapt to the changing environmental conditions through altering their morphological and physiological traits. One known mechanism for phenotypic innovation to be achieved is environment-induced rapid yet inheritable epigenetic changes. The...

Salt stress is becoming an increasing threat to global agriculture. In this study, physiological and proteomics analysis were performed using a salt-tolerant grass species, Leymus chinensis (L. chinensis). The aim of this study is to understand the potential mechanism of salt tolerance in L. chinensis that used for crop molecular breeding. A series of short-term (<48 h) NaCl treatments (0 ~ 700...

BACKGROUND Root lifespan is an important trait that determines plants' ability to acquire and conserve soil resources. There have been several studies investigating characteristics of root lifespan of both woody and herbaceous species. However, most of the studies have focused on non-clonal plants, and there have been little data on root lifespan for clonal plants that occur widely in temperate...

Reproductive allocation is critically important for population maintenance and usually varies with not only environmental factors but also biotic ones. As a typical rhizome clonal plant in China's northern grasslands, Leymus chinensis usually dominates the steppe communities and grows in clonal patches. In order to clarify the sexual reproductive allocation of L. chinensis in the process of the...

BACKGROUND Although it has been widely accepted that global changes will pose the most important constrains to plant survival and distribution, our knowledge of the adaptive mechanism for plant with large-scale environmental changes (e.g. drought and high temperature) remains limited. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS An experiment was conducted to examine anatomical and physiological plasticity...

Changes in precipitation can influence soil water and nutrient availability, and thus affect plant nutrient conservation strategies. Better understanding of how nutrient conservation changes with variations in water availability is crucial for predicting the potential influence of global climate change on plant nutrient-use strategy. Here, green-leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentratio...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Mechanical stimulation (MS) often induces plants to undergo thigmomorphogenesis and to synthesize an array of signalling substances. In clonal plants, connected ramets often share resources and hormones. However, little is known about whether and how clonal integration influences the ability of clonal plants to withstand MS. We hypothesized that the effects of MS may be modu...