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Abstract: In response to stress, plants evoke a range of adaptive mechanisms. However, recurrent stresses, thus repeated stress responses in biological systems, come with a potential energy trade-off, impacting the overall energy budget of the organism. Our research explores the concept of priming-induced stress memory in plants, where exposure to mild or non-lethal stress events equips plants to better confront subsequent, more severe stressors. We find that priming aids plants exhibit enhanced tolerance to subsequent intense heat stress. This increased resilience can be attributed to the establishment of efficient cellular homeostasis and a strategic balance between growth and defense mechanisms. We unravel how priming facilitates the rewiring of transcriptional regulatory networks to orchestrate stress response. We posit that employing priming or priming-responsive molecules could avoid the damaging effects of intense heat stress, in the face of changing environmental conditions and aid in sustainable agricultural practices.

Biography: Anu obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Potsdam and the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Germany, in 2014. She continued as a postdoctoral research fellow in the same “Gene-Regulatory Networks” research group at the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology and the University of Potsdam, Germany, until January 2016. Later, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, before joining the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), ACT, Australia. After spending one year at CSIRO, she joined the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Tirupati in November 2018 as Assistant Professor in Biology, and now she is an Associate Professor in Biology and Associate Dean of International Relations at IISER Tirupati.

Theme of her research:

• To study the impact of priming on plant response to environmental stresses.
• To unravel the molecular mechanisms determining the duration of the primed state and stress memory in plants.