Suchergebnisse

Background: Plant acclimation is a highly complex process, which cannot be fully understood by analysis at any one specific level (i.e. subcellular, cellular or whole plant scale). Various soft-computing techniques, such as neural networks or fuzzy logic, were designed to analyze complex multivariate data sets and might be used to model large such multiscale data sets in plant biology. Methodology and Principal Findings: In this study we assessed the effectiveness of applying neuro-fuzzy logic to modeling the effects of light intensities and sucrose content/concentration in the in vitro culture of kiwifruit on plant acclimation, by modeling multivariate data from 14 parameters at different biological scales of organization. The model provides insights through application of 14 sets of straightforward rules and indicates that plants with lower stomatal aperture areas and higher photoinhibition and photoprotective status score best for acclimation. The model suggests the best condition for obtaining higher quality acclimatized plantlets is the combination of 2.3% sucrose and photonflux of 122-130 μmol m-2 s -1. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that artificial intelligence models are not only successful in identifying complex nonlinear interactions among variables, by integrating large-scale data sets from different levels of biological organization in a holistic plant systems-biology approach, but can also be used successfully for inferring new results without further experimental work. © 2014 Gago et al. ; This work was supported by The Regional Government Xunta de Galicia (PGIDIT02BTF30102PR) and Spanish MEC (AGL 2003-05877) to PPG. ML (PR2010-0460) and PPG (PR2010-0357) thank the Spanish Ministry of Education for their financial support during their sabbatical year at Faculty of Science, University of Utrecht, Netherlands ; Peer Reviewed

The alternative oxidase pathway (AOP) is associated with excess energy dissipation in leaves of terrestrial plants. To address whether this association is less important in palustrine plants, we compared the role of AOP in balancing energy and carbon metabolism in palustrine and terrestrial environments by identifying metabolic relationships between primary carbon metabolites and AOP in each habitat. We measured oxygen isotope discrimination during respiration, gas exchange, and metabolite profiles in aerial leaves of ten fern and angiosperm species belonging to five families organized as pairs of palustrine and terrestrial species. We performed a partial least square model combined with variable importance for projection to reveal relationships between the electron partitioning to the AOP (τa) and metabolite levels. Terrestrial plants showed higher values of net photosynthesis (AN) and τa, together with stronger metabolic relationships between τa and sugars, important for water conservation. Palustrine plants showed relationships between τa and metabolites related to the shikimate pathway and the GABA shunt, to be important for heterophylly. Excess energy dissipation via AOX is less crucial in palustrine environments than on land. The basis of this difference resides in the contrasting photosynthetic performance observed in each environment, thus reinforcing the importance of AOP for photosynthesis. ; This work was mainly supported by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO, Spain) (project PGC2018-093824-B-C41) and the ERDF (FEDER). Others funding were provided by FONDECYT No. 1191118 from National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) and the Chilean Scholarship Program/Becas de doctorado nacional/2017–21180329, the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 753301, the 'Ramon y Cajal' contract RYC2019-027244-I/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Social Fund. ; Peer reviewed