Plants respond and adapt to changes in their environment by employing a wide variety of genetic, molecular, and biochemical mechanisms. When so doing, they trigger large-scale rearrangements at the metabolic and transcriptional levels. The dynamics and patterns of these rearrangements and how they govern a stress response is not clear. In this opinion, we discuss a plant's response to stress from the perspective of the metabolic gene co-expression network and its rearrangement upon stress. As a case study, we use publicly available expression data of Arabidopsis thaliana plants exposed to heat and drought stress to evaluate and compare the co-expression networks of metabolic genes. The analysis highlights that stress conditions can lead to metabolic tightening and expansion of the co-expression network. We argue that this rearrangement could play a role in a plant's response to stress and thus may be an additional tool to assess and understand stress tolerance/sensitivity. Additional studies are needed to evaluate the metabolic network in response to multiple stresses at various intensities and across different genetic backgrounds (e.g., intra- and inter-species, sensitive and tolerant eco/genotypes).

中文翻译：

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代谢收紧和共表达网络的扩展能否在应激反应和耐受性中发挥作用？

植物通过使用各种遗传、分子和生化机制来响应和适应环境的变化。这样做时，它们会触发代谢和转录水平的大规模重排。这些重排的动力学和模式以及它们如何控制压力反应尚不清楚。在这种观点下，我们从代谢基因共表达网络及其在胁迫下重排的角度讨论了植物对胁迫的反应。作为案例研究，我们使用暴露于热和干旱胁迫的拟南芥植物的公开表达数据来评估和比较代谢基因的共表达网络。分析强调，压力条件会导致代谢收紧和共表达网络的扩展。我们认为这种重排可能在植物对胁迫的反应中发挥作用，因此可能是评估和理解胁迫耐受性/敏感性的额外工具。需要更多的研究来评估代谢网络对不同强度和不同遗传背景（例如，种内和种间、敏感和耐受生态/基因型）的多重压力的反应。