Combined heat and drought stress alters chromatin accessibility and primes potato abscisic acid biosynthesis
Due to climate change, abiotic stresses get increasingly more frequent, in a combined and recurrent manner in the same growing season. Chromatin accessibility enables efficient responses to combined stress and priming for reoccurring stresses. To study the regulatory basis of priming, we profiled chromatin accessibility and gene expression in leaves of two genetically distinct potato cultivars after prolonged heat, drought, waterlogging, and combined heat and drought. We show that most accessibility changes are stress-specific, however, drought stress elicits a distinct transcriptional response as compared to combined heat and drought stress, with strong chaperone induction and dampened abscisic acid signalling, despite water deficit. A second cycle of combined stress reveals transcriptional memory of abscisic acid biosynthesis gene StNCED3 and its transcriptional activator StWRKY33b, providing a new mechanistic insight of abiotic stress memory in a staple crop important for global food security.