[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Weretilnyk_Elizabeth.jpg” caption=”Elizabeth Weretilnyk. Photo credit: Graham Janz”]For those of us who lack a green thumb, the fruits of our well-intentioned yet often inadequate labour are frequently trips to the garden centre to replace the plant we forgot to water. However, when Canadian farmers have an unlucky growing season the effects are much more severe. An early frost or prolonged drought can jeopardize the livelihood of the farmers who grow our food, cost the Canadian economy billions of dollars and perhaps even mean that people will go hungry.

Although farmers and even the everyday gardener make efforts to protect their plants, ultimately the plant's ability to adapt to stress determines its survival. McMaster University's Elizabeth Weretilnyk, a professor in the Department of Biology, is helping plants help themselves. She notes, “Plants can't move so they either have to make adjustments to allow them to survive in a location or they will fail to thrive and die.”

Weretilnyk's work involves biochemical and genetic analysis of plants' ability to tolerate stresses including cold temperatures or freezing, water shortages and growth in overly salty conditions. As with animals, plants have traits encoded in DNA. Weretilnyk says, “Given the appropriate conditions plants can express some of these traits and do remarkable things. I wanted to study what these remarkable things are.”

At the onset of her research Weretilnyk studied spinach plants. Spinach is a very hardy plant that is able to grow in water that is about 60 per cent as salty as seawater. For a plant, growing in salty water is similar to growing without adequate water and the results are generally the same – wilting and death. This occurs because of the structure of a plant's cell membrane.

Plant cells are separated from the external environment by a membrane through which water can pass but salt cannot. If the concentration of salt in the water inside and outside of the cell is different, the system will naturally try to make the concentrations equal.

In the case of the plant in salty water, the only way to equalize the salt concentration inside and outside of the cell is to have the water from inside the plant flow outside in an attempt to dilute the external salt water. The result is a wilted plant that no longer has enough water in its cells to survive.

One tolerance mechanism that some plants, including spinach, use to prevent them from losing water involves making small molecules and storing them inside their cells. The small molecules, which are called 'compatible solutes', are very similar to salts. Therefore, as these solutes build up inside the cell, it begins to appear that the inside of the cell is just as salty as the water outside. The result is that water doesn't move out of the cells and the plant remains healthy.

Having concluded that this tolerance mechanism was well-studied, Weretilnyk focused her efforts on “the things that aren't in the textbook: What are plants doing that nobody's discovered?” In order answer this question, Weretilnyk turned to several innovative genetic and biochemical approaches.

Weretilnyk observes that when a plant adapts to a stressful situation it is often not visually apparent what the plant is doing. For this reason, she uses gene chips and micro-array technology to see what happens at a genetic level inside the plant.

Plants, like all organisms, have a pre-existing set of genes that act as the instructions for making proteins. When the plant 'expresses' a gene, it manufactures the protein that corresponds to the gene – this is only done when the protein is needed. Weretilnyk is able to observe how the expression of the plant's genes changes when it is under stress. When Weretilnyk observes that one gene is expressed more in a stressful situation, she knows that it is probably an important stress tolerance gene. This knowledge opens many doors of opportunity for strengthening plants.

Although spinach is a very hardy plant, it is very difficult to work with genetically. In contrast, the best plant to work with genetically, called arabidopsis, is somewhat of a wimp in terms of stress tolerance. In order to be able to study the biochemical changes that occur during stress tolerance adaptations, Weretilnyk needed the best of both worlds – and she found it on the salt flats of the Yukon.

Through the support of funding agencies such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Weretilnyk is now working with a plant in the mustard family that is a close relative to arabidopsis. This plant can grow happily in seawater, it can be dried until it is “crispy” and then re-watered back to health, and it can be studied genetically much more efficiently than spinach.

Weretilnyk uses this plant to study how plants can be modified – through modern genetic engineering or even traditional cross breading – to withstand significant stress and to grow in less than ideal conditions.

As the world population continues to grow exponentially and with millions of people starving worldwide, it is critical that resilient crops be developed that can grow on land that has typically been un-arable. If marginal land can be brought into production, more people can be fed without bringing more of the world's dwindling rainforests into agricultural production.

One of the most exciting aspects of Weretilnyk's research is that her model plant is very closely related to canola – a crop that feeds millions and brings six billion dollars to the Canadian economy each year. Many of the genetic manipulations that Weretilnyk performs on her plants also apply to canola.

According to Weretilnyk, “The past few years have really told us what weather can do and the impact it can have on cash crop receipts and farmers. If we don't increase the stress tolerance of our crops, we could be in for a rough ride – not just in Canada, elsewhere in the world as well. Anything that can increase the tolerance of a plant, and it doesn't have to be by much, can mean the difference between a farmer having a crop and not.”

Thousands of farmers depend on crops for their livelihood. Millions of gardeners strive to make flowers bloom and to keep their grass green. Billions of people rely on agriculture for food and nourishment. Regardless of who you are or where you live, chances are the work of researchers like Elizabeth Weretilnyk will impact your stomach and your life in some way.

(The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council SPARK (Students Promoting Awareness of Research Knowledge) program was launched in 1999 at 10 universities across Canada. Through SPARK, students with an aptitude for communications are recruited, trained and paid to write stories based on the NSERC supported research at participating universities.)