The Transcriptional and Translational Landscape of Plant Response to Low Temperature Action

One of the unresolved questions in stress-response biology remains the mechanism of coordination of expression levels in plants between the slow preparation phase and the rapid reactive response to stress exposure. In this work, we proposed a two-level analysis covering simultaneously transcriptional and translational profiles of Solanum lycopersicum under short-term cold stress, hardening and their combination. By combining polysome profiling and total transcriptome analysis, we revealed that expression under cold stress is not a linear chain but a structurally separated system with two coordinated centres of regulation. Hardening activates a robust transcriptional programme with a focus on biogenesis, light signalling and structural adaptations. In contrast, acute stress initiates selective translation of metabolic and defence proteins without prior enhancement of transcription. Modular analysis (WGCNA) showed low overlap between transcriptional and translational networks, indicating functional divergence between levels of regulation. In this work, we demonstrate that the cold response is a strategic reallocation of resources between expression levels depending on the type of signal. The work forms a bridge between basic biology and applied breeding, offering targets promising for targeted improvement of plant stress tolerance and further bioengineering of adaptive agrocultures.