Extreme cooling enables survival in extreme heat
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Abstract
Complex, multicellular extremophiles face intense challenges in coordinating their cells, tissues, and organs to function in harsh environments. Tidestromia oblongifolia is a desert plant that thrives in Death Valley, where air temperatures exceed 49 °C. Using natural collections of T. oblongifolia seed, we identified individuals that survive in daily air temperature regimens at the eukaryotic upper thermal limit of 60 °C. Genome-wide association testing detected genetic variation for survival in extreme heat, and transcriptomics implicated pathways regulating leaf cooling. High-throughput infrared imaging revealed that survival was enabled by leaf cooling far below air temperature, identifying a physiological mechanism of thermophily in a multicellular organism. These discoveries provide insights into mechanisms of extreme heat adaptation that could be leveraged to engineer heat-resilient crops.
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Excerpt
A desert plant that air-conditions itself. Tidestromia oblongifolia survives 60 °C air by cooling its own leaves about 10 °C below it, and this study by Feehan and co-authors shows that self-cooling is what keeps it alive.
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