Evolution of cold acclimation and frost tolerance in Pooideae
The grass subfamily Pooideae dominates the grass flora across the Northern temperate region. Our research investigates how Pooideae have evolved to survive and thrive through long, cold winters. We focus on the evolution and mechanisms of cold acclimation and frost tolerance, combining controlled environment experiments on phylogenetically diverse species with high-resolution physiological measurements, genomics and transcriptomics.
A central part of our work examines the role of fructans—water-soluble carbohydrates that accumulate in many Pooideae species—as key protectants against freezing and desiccation. We study how fructan diversity and metabolism contribute to stress tolerance, integrating biochemical profiling, transcriptomics, and genomics to link fructan types and regulatory networks to specific stress responses.
By merging transcriptomics, metabolomics, targeted gene studies, and phylogenetic frameworks, we explore the molecular pathways underpinning cold and frost responses, and how these traits evolved. Our goal is to reveal the evolutionary drivers of winter survival and identify mechanisms that may enhance resilience under future climates.
Evolution of flowering time in Pooideae
The Northern temperate region is defined by a short but intense growing season, making precise timing of flowering critical for reproductive success. In Pooideae model species such as barley and wheat, flowering in spring is typically initiated by a two-step process: vernalization (prolonged exposure to cold) followed by promotion under long-day conditions.
We investigate how this two-step flowering induction has evolved across the subfamily. Using phylogenetically diverse Pooideae species, we test flowering responses to vernalization and photoperiod under controlled conditions. By integrating transcriptomic analyses with studies of key candidate genes, we aim to uncover the molecular mechanisms and evolutionary pathways that have shaped variation in flowering time across the Pooideae.
Evolution of life history strategies in Pooideae
Many plants avoid seasonal stressors like drought and frost by adopting an annual life cycle strategy. An alternative strategy is to survive stressful conditions by adopting coping mechanisms to live through many seasons, referred to as the perennial life cycle strategy. Annual plants flower a single time during their one-year life cycle, investing much of their energy into rapid reproduction. In contrast, perennial plants flower multiple times over several years, and partition their resources between reproduction and persistence. These two adaptive strategies require fundamentally different physiology and growth traits. Annuals have high growth rates, large leaf area, large allocation of resources to reproductive structures and high biomass production. Perennials have traits allowing for persistence and defense, like high tissue density and allocation of higher proportion of biomass into roots. Even with these fundamental differences in growth strategies, the evolutionary distance between annual and perennial species may be very small, indicating that small differences in genetic makeup differentiate the growth habits. However, what these differences are is to a large degree unknown. We seek out to identify genes contributing to the differences between annual and perennial life history strategies in temperate grasses and determine how physiology and development are influenced by these genes.
