Attitudes towards Technology: Insights on Rarely Discussed Influences on Older Adults' Willingness to Adopt Active Assisted Living (AAL).

BACKGROUND: European research policy promotes active assisted living (AAL) to alleviate costs and reach new markets. The main argument for massive investments in AAL is its potential to raise older adults' Quality of Life and enhance their freedom, autonomy, mobility, social integration, and communication. However, AAL is less widely spread in older adults' households than expected. RESEARCH AIM: We investigate how the variable "technology acceptance" is connected to socio-economic-, social, health, "personal attitude towards ageing", and "Quality of life" variables. METHOD: We conducted a study in Vienna between 2018 and 2020, questioning 245 older adults (M = 74, SD = 6.654) living in private homes. We calculated multivariate models regressing technology acceptance on the various exploratory and confounding variables. RESULTS: Experiencing an event that made the person perceive their age differently changed the attitude towards using an assistive technological system. Participants perceived technology that is directly associated with another human being (e.g., the use of technology to communicate with a physician) more positively. CONCLUSION: Older adults' attitudes towards technology may change throughout their lives. Using major events in life as potential entry points for technology requires awareness to avoid reducing the lives of older adults to these events. Secondly, a certain human preference for "human technology" may facilitate abuse if technology is given a white coat, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth that may falsely be associated with a natural person. This aspect raises the ethical issue of accurate information as a significant precondition for informed consent.

Highlight Induced Transcriptional Priming against a Subsequent Drought Stress in Arabidopsis thaliana.

In plants, priming allows a more rapid and robust response to recurring stresses. However, while the nature of plant response to a single stress can affect the subsequent response to the same stress has been deeply studied, considerably less is known on how the priming effect due to one stress can help plants cope with subsequent different stresses, a situation that can be found in natural ecosystems. Here, we investigate the potential priming effects in Arabidopsis plants subjected to a high light (HL) stress followed by a drought (D) stress. The cross-stress tolerance was assessed at the physiological and molecular levels. Our data demonstrated that HL mediated transcriptional priming on the expression of specific stress response genes. Furthermore, this priming effect involves both ABA-dependent and ABA-independent responses, as also supported by reduced expression of these genes in the aba1-3 mutant compared to the wild type. We have also assessed several physiological parameters with the aim of seeing if gene expression coincides with any physiological changes. Overall, the results from the physiological measurements suggested that these physiological processes did not experience metabolic changes in response to the stresses. In addition, we show that the H3K4me3 epigenetic mark could be a good candidate as an epigenetic mark in priming response. Overall, our results help to elucidate how HL-mediated priming can limit D-stress and enhance plant responses to stress.

Stuck in the Present: A Human Lack of Ability to Visualise (Different) Needs in the Future May Hamper Timely Implementation of AAL and Supportive Technology.

Cities face an evident demographic change, making assistive technologies (AAL) an interesting choice to support older adults to autonomously age in place. Yet, supportive technologies are not as widely spread as one would expect. Hence, we investigate the surroundings of older adults living in Vienna and analyse their "socio relational setup", considering their social integration and psychophysical state compared to others (health, fitness, activeness, contentedness). Method: Our data included 245 older adults (age: M = 74, SD = 6654) living in their own homes (2018-2020 with different grades of needing support). We calculated univariate and multivariate models regressing the socio-relational setup on the change of routines, technology attitude, mobility aid use, internet use, subjective age, openness to move to an institutional care facility in the future, and other confounding variables. Results: We found a strong correlation between all categories (health, fitness, activeness, contentedness) of older adults comparing themselves to their peers. Among others, they are significantly related to institutional care openness, which implies that participants who felt fitter and more active than their peers were less clear in visualising their future: unpleasant circumstances of ageing are suppressed if the current life circumstances are perceived as good. This is an example of cognitive dissonance.

Water-related innovations in land plants evolved by different patterns of gene cooption and novelty.

The origin of land plants and their descendants was marked by the evolution of key adaptations to life in terrestrial environments such as roots, vascular tissue and stomata. Though these innovations are well characterized, the evolution of the genetic toolkit underlying their development and function is poorly understood. We analysed molecular data from 532 species to investigate the evolutionary origin and diversification of genes involved in the development and regulation of these adaptations. We show that novel genes in the first land plants led to the single origin of stomata, but the stomatal closure of seed plants resulted from later gene expansions. By contrast, the major mechanism leading to the origin of vascular tissue was cooption of genes that emerged in the first land plants, enabling continuous water transport throughout the ancestral vascular plant. In turn, new key genes in the ancestors of plants with true leaves and seed plants led to the emergence of roots and lateral roots. The analysis highlights the different modes of evolution that enabled plants to conquer land, suggesting that gene expansion and cooption are the most common mechanisms of biological innovation in plant evolutionary history.

Let's Walk It: Mobility and the Perceived Quality of Life in Older Adults.

European policy and the research and development landscape put forward a number of arguments in favor of implementing "Active Assisted Living" (AAL) for older adults: it will improve older adults' quality of life, allow them to age in place, and keep costs for an ageing society down by exploiting new technology markets. The idea is that older adults who are supported by AAL and make use of assistive technologies will enjoy more freedom, autonomy, and mobility and also improved social integration and better communication. Yet, despite a history of more than 10 years of European research and development, the use of AAL applications is not as widespread as expected. To examine older adults' attitudes to assistive technologies, we conducted a study in Vienna (Austria) between 2018 and 2020 questioning 245 older adults aged 61-93 years (M = 74.27 SD = 6.654) who lived at their private homes and had different support needs (ranging from "no support" to "everyday visit of social and/or care organizations"). The three goals of the study encompassed: (1) examination of their quality of life, (2) their attitudes and use of assistive technologies, and (3) the way they perceive their own and others' life-course and getting older. AAL as a concept links "ageing in place" and "quality of life". However, "mobility" is also of major importance here. In this paper, we aim to investigate the relation between the independent variables "Quality of life" and "Mobility" and their possible associations with the following dependent variables: cohabitation, social integration, self-rated health, sportive activities, locomotion, home well-being and safety, physical limitations, falls, and self-perception of their own ageing (compared to others). We calculated multivariate models regressing on these explaining and confounding variables. We found a positive correlation between mobility and quality of life. In detail, our results show a significant positive association between QOL and mobility regarding self-rated health and self-perception. Experiencing vertigo, walking difficulties, and balance problems significantly and negatively influence self-rated health and self-perception compared to others. Our findings can also be read as a clear message that there is a need to improve both health and the culture of ageing and to facilitate positive attitudes toward ageing as an efficient way to enhance the Quality of life of older adults.

Evolutionary Origins of Drought Tolerance in Spermatophytes.

It is commonly known that drought stress is a major constraint limiting crop production. Drought stress and associated drought tolerance mechanisms are therefore under intense investigation with the view to future production of drought tolerant crops. With an ever-growing population and variable climate, novel approaches need to be considered to sustainably feed future generations. In this context, definitions of drought tolerance are highly variable, which poses a major challenge for the systematic assessment of this trait across the plant kingdom. Furthermore, drought tolerance is a polygenic trait and understanding the evolution of this complex trait may inform us about patterns of gene gain and loss in relation to diverse drought adaptations. We look at the transition of plants from water to land, and the role of drought tolerance in enabling this transition, before discussing the first drought tolerant plant and common drought responses amongst vascular plants. We reviewed the distribution of a combined "drought tolerance" trait in very broad terms to encompass different experimental systems and definitions used in the current literature and assigned a binary trait "tolerance vs. sensitivity" in 178 extant plant species. By simplifying drought responses of plants into this "binary" trait we were able to explore the evolution of drought tolerance across the wider plant kingdom, compared to previous studies. We show how this binary "drought tolerance/sensitivity" trait has evolved and discuss how incorporating this information into an evolutionary genomics framework could provide insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying extreme drought adaptations.

Time-series transcriptomics reveals a BBX32-directed control of acclimation to high light in mature Arabidopsis leaves.

The photosynthetic capacity of mature leaves increases after several days' exposure to constant or intermittent episodes of high light (HL) and is manifested primarily as changes in chloroplast physiology. How this chloroplast-level acclimation to HL is initiated and controlled is unknown. From expanded Arabidopsis leaves, we determined HL-dependent changes in transcript abundance of 3844 genes in a 0-6 h time-series transcriptomics experiment. It was hypothesized that among such genes were those that contribute to the initiation of HL acclimation. By focusing on differentially expressed transcription (co-)factor genes and applying dynamic statistical modelling to the temporal transcriptomics data, a regulatory network of 47 predominantly photoreceptor-regulated transcription (co-)factor genes was inferred. The most connected gene in this network was B-BOX DOMAIN CONTAINING PROTEIN32 (BBX32). Plants overexpressing BBX32 were strongly impaired in acclimation to HL and displayed perturbed expression of photosynthesis-associated genes under LL and after exposure to HL. These observations led to demonstrating that as well as regulation of chloroplast-level acclimation by BBX32, CRYPTOCHROME1, LONG HYPOCOTYL5, CONSTITUTIVELY PHOTOMORPHOGENIC1 and SUPPRESSOR OF PHYA-105 are important. In addition, the BBX32-centric gene regulatory network provides a view of the transcriptional control of acclimation in mature leaves distinct from other photoreceptor-regulated processes, such as seedling photomorphogenesis.

The Role of Ribosomal Protein S6 Kinases in Plant Homeostasis.

The p70 ribosomal S6 kinase (S6K) family is a group of highly conserved kinases in eukaryotes that regulates cell growth, cell proliferation, and stress response via modulating protein synthesis and ribosomal biogenesis. S6Ks are downstream effectors of the Target of Rapamycin (TOR) pathway, which connects nutrient and energy signaling to growth and homeostasis, under normal and stress conditions. The plant S6K family includes two isoforms, S6K1 and S6K2, which, despite their high level of sequence similarity, have distinct functions and regulation mechanisms. Significant advances on the characterization of human S6Ks have occurred in the past few years, while studies on plant S6Ks are scarce. In this article, we review expression and activation of the two S6K isoforms in plants and we discuss their roles in mediating responses to stresses and developmental cues.

The Origin of Land Plants Is Rooted in Two Bursts of Genomic Novelty.

Over the last 470 Ma, plant evolution has seen major evolutionary transitions, such as the move from water to land and the origins of vascular tissues, seeds, and flowers [1]. These have resulted in the evolution of terrestrial flora that has shaped modern ecosystems and the diversification of the Plant Kingdom, Viridiplantae, into over 374,000 described species [2]. Each of these transitions was accompanied by the gain and loss of genes in plant genomes. For example, whole-genome duplications are known to be fundamental to the origins of both seed and flowering plants [3, 4]. With the ever-increasing quality and quantity of whole-genome data, evolutionary insight into origins of distinct plant groups using comparative genomic techniques is now feasible. Here, using an evolutionary genomics pipeline to compare 208 complete genomes, we analyze the gene content of the ancestral genomes of the last common ancestor of land plants and all other major groups of plant. This approach reveals an unprecedented level of fundamental genomic novelties in two nodes related to the origin of land plants: the first in the origin of streptophytes during the Ediacaran and another in the ancestor of land plants in the Ordovician. Our findings highlight the biological processes that evolved with the origin of land plants and emphasize the importance of conserved gene novelties in plant diversification. Comparisons to other eukaryotic studies suggest a separation of the genomic origins of multicellularity and terrestrialization in plants.

Accelerated flowering time reduces lifetime water use without penalizing reproductive performance in Arabidopsis.

Natural selection driven by water availability has resulted in considerable variation for traits associated with drought tolerance and leaf-level water-use efficiency (WUE). In Arabidopsis, little is known about the variation of whole-plant water use (PWU) and whole-plant WUE (transpiration efficiency). To investigate the genetic basis of PWU, we developed a novel proxy trait by combining flowering time and rosette water use to estimate lifetime PWU. We validated its usefulness for large-scale screening of mapping populations in a subset of ecotypes. This parameter subsequently facilitated the screening of water use and drought tolerance traits in a recombinant inbred line population derived from two Arabidopsis accessions with distinct water-use strategies, namely, C24 (low PWU) and Col-0 (high PWU). Subsequent quantitative trait loci mapping and validation through near-isogenic lines identified two causal quantitative trait loci, which showed that a combination of weak and nonfunctional alleles of the FRIGIDA (FRI) and FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) genes substantially reduced plant water use due to their control of flowering time. Crucially, we observed that reducing flowering time and consequently water use did not penalize reproductive performance, as such water productivity (seed produced per unit of water transpired) improved. Natural polymorphisms of FRI and FLC have previously been elucidated as key determinants of natural variation in intrinsic WUE (δ13 C). However, in the genetic backgrounds tested here, drought tolerance traits, stomatal conductance, δ13 C. and rosette water use were independent of allelic variation at FRI and FLC, suggesting that flowering is critical in determining lifetime PWU but not always leaf-level traits.

Profiling of advanced glycation end products uncovers abiotic stress-specific target proteins in Arabidopsis.

Non-enzymatic post-translational modifications of proteins can occur when the nucleophilic amino acid side chains of lysine and arginine encounter a reactive metabolite to form advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Glycation arises predominantly from the degradation of reducing sugars, and glycation has been observed during metabolic stress from glucose metabolism in both animals and plants. The implications of glycating proteins on plant proteins and biology has received little attention, and here we describe a robust assessment of global glycation profiles. We identified 112 glycated proteins that were common under a range of growth conditions and abiotic stress treatments, but also showed rosette age, diurnal, and drought stress-specific targets. Among 18 drought stress-specific glycation targets included several thioredoxin and thioredoxin-like proteins. In vitro glycation of two carbohydrate metabolism enzymes led either to a reduction or to a complete inhibition of activity, demonstrating the impact of glycation on protein function. Taken together, our results suggest that stress-specific glycation patterns of a small number of regulatory proteins may have a much broader impact on downstream target proteins that are, for example, associated with primary metabolism.

Plant Life in Extreme Environments: How Do You Improve Drought Tolerance?

Systems studies of drought stress in resurrection plants and other xerophytes are rapidly identifying a large number of genes, proteins and metabolites that respond to severe drought stress or desiccation. This has provided insight into drought resistance mechanisms, which allow xerophytes to persist under such extreme environmental conditions. Some of the mechanisms that ensure cellular protection during severe dehydration appear to be unique to desert species, while many other stress signaling pathways are in common with well-studied model and crop species. However, despite the identification of many desiccation inducible genes, there are few "gene-to-field" examples that have led to improved drought tolerance and yield stability derived from resurrection plants, and only few examples have emerged from model species. This has led to many critical reviews on the merit of the experimental approaches and the type of plants used to study drought resistance mechanisms. This article discusses the long-standing arguments between the ecophysiology and molecular biology communities, on how to "drought-proof" future crop varieties. It concludes that a more positive and inclusive dialogue between the different disciplines is needed, to allow us to move forward in a much more constructive way.

Arabidopsis HEAT SHOCK TRANSCRIPTION FACTORA1b regulates multiple developmental genes under benign and stress conditions.

In Arabidopsis thaliana, HEAT SHOCK TRANSCRIPTION FACTORA1b (HSFA1b) controls resistance to environmental stress and is a determinant of reproductive fitness by influencing seed yield. To understand how HSFA1b achieves this, we surveyed its genome-wide targets (ChIP-seq) and its impact on the transcriptome (RNA-seq) under non-stress (NS), heat stress (HS) in the wild type, and in HSFA1b-overexpressing plants under NS. A total of 952 differentially expressed HSFA1b-targeted genes were identified, of which at least 85 are development associated and were bound predominantly under NS. A further 1780 genes were differentially expressed but not bound by HSFA1b, of which 281 were classified as having development-associated functions. These genes are indirectly regulated through a hierarchical network of 27 transcription factors (TFs). Furthermore, we identified 480 natural antisense non-coding RNA (cisNAT) genes bound by HSFA1b, defining a further mode of indirect regulation. Finally, HSFA1b-targeted genomic features not only harboured heat shock elements, but also MADS box, LEAFY, and G-Box promoter motifs. This revealed that HSFA1b is one of eight TFs that target a common group of stress defence and developmental genes. We propose that HSFA1b transduces environmental cues to many stress tolerance and developmental genes to allow plants to adjust their growth and development continually in a varying environment.

To defend or to grow: lessons from Arabidopsis C24.

The emergence of Arabidopsis as a model species and the availability of genetic and genomic resources have resulted in the identification and detailed characterization of abiotic stress signalling pathways. However, this has led only to limited success in engineering abiotic stress tolerance in crops. This is because there needs to be a deeper understanding of how to combine resistances to a range of stresses with growth and productivity. The natural variation and genomic resources of Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) are a great asset to understand the mechanisms of multiple stress tolerances. One natural variant in Arabidopsis is the accession C24, and here we provide an overview of the increasing research interest in this accession. C24 is highlighted as a source of tolerance for multiple abiotic and biotic stresses, and a key accession to understand the basis of basal immunity to infection, high water use efficiency, and water productivity. Multiple biochemical, physiological, and phenological mechanisms have been attributed to these traits in C24, and none of them constrains productivity. Based on the uniqueness of C24, we postulate that the use of variation derived from natural selection in undomesticated species provides opportunities to better understand how complex environmental stress tolerances and resource use efficiency are co-ordinated.

Natural variation of life-history traits, water use, and drought responses in Arabidopsis.

The ability of plants to acquire and use water is critical in determining life-history traits such as growth, flowering, and allocation of biomass into reproduction. In this context, a combination of functionally linked traits is essential for plants to respond to environmental changes in a coordinated fashion to maximize resource use efficiency. We analyzed different water-use traits in Arabidopsis ecotypes to identify functionally linked traits that determine water use and plant growth performance. Water-use traits measured were (i) leaf-level water-use efficiency (WUE i ) to evaluate the amount of CO 2 fixed relative to water loss per leaf area and (ii) short-term plant water use at the vegetative stage (VWU) as a measure of whole-plant transpiration. Previously observed phenotypic variance in VWU, WUE i and life-history parameters, highlighted C24 as a valuable ecotype that combined drought tolerance, preferential reproductive biomass allocation, high WUE i , and reduced water use. We therefore screened 35 Arabidopsis ecotypes for these parameters, in order to assess whether the phenotypic combinations observed in C24 existed more widely within Arabidopsis ecotypes. All parameters were measured on a short dehydration cycle. A segmented regression analysis was carried out to evaluate the plasticity of the drought response and identified the breakpoint as a reliable measure of drought sensitivity. VWU was largely dependent on rosette area, but importantly the drought sensitivity and plasticity measures were independent of the transpiring leaf surface. A breakpoint at high rSWC indicated a more drought-sensitive plant that closed stomata early during the dehydration cycle and consequently showed stronger plasticity in leaf-level WUE i parameters. None of the sensitivity, plasticity, or water-use measurements were able to predict the overall growth performance; however, there was a general trade-off between vegetative and reproductive biomass. PCA and hierarchical clustering revealed that C24 was unique among the 35 ecotypes in uniting all the beneficial water use and stress tolerance traits, while also maintaining above average plant growth. We propose that a short dehydration cycle, measuring drought sensitivity and VWU is a fast and reliable screen for plant water use and drought response strategies.

Integrating transcriptomic techniques and k-means clustering in metabolomics to identify markers of abiotic and biotic stress in Medicago truncatula.

INTRODUCTION: Nitrogen-fixing legumes are invaluable crops, but are sensitive to physical and biological stresses. Whilst drought and infection from the soil-borne pathogen Fusarium oxysporum have been studied individually, their combined effects have not been widely investigated. OBJECTIVES: We aimed to determine the effect of combined stress using methods usually associated with transcriptomics to detect metabolic differences between treatment groups that could not be identified by more traditional means, such as principal component analysis and partial least squares discriminant analysis. METHODS: Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry data from the root and leaves of model legume Medicago truncatula were analysed using Gaussian Process 2-Sample Test, k-means cluster analysis and temporal clustering by affinity propagation. RESULTS: Metabolic differences were detected: we identified known stress markers, including changes in concentration for sucrose and citric acid, and showed that combined stress can exacerbate the effect of drought. Changes in roots were found to be smaller than those in leaves, but differences due to Fusarium infection were identified. The transfer of sucrose from leaves to roots can be seen in the time series using transcriptomic techniques with the metabolomics time series. Other metabolite concentrations that change as a result of treatment include phosphoric acid, malic acid and tetrahydroxychalcone. CONCLUSIONS: Probing metabolomic data with transcriptomic tools provides new insights and could help to identify resilient plant varieties, thereby increasing future crop yield and improving food security.

Time-Series Transcriptomics Reveals That AGAMOUS-LIKE22 Affects Primary Metabolism and Developmental Processes in Drought-Stressed Arabidopsis.

In Arabidopsis thaliana, changes in metabolism and gene expression drive increased drought tolerance and initiate diverse drought avoidance and escape responses. To address regulatory processes that link these responses, we set out to identify genes that govern early responses to drought. To do this, a high-resolution time series transcriptomics data set was produced, coupled with detailed physiological and metabolic analyses of plants subjected to a slow transition from well-watered to drought conditions. A total of 1815 drought-responsive differentially expressed genes were identified. The early changes in gene expression coincided with a drop in carbon assimilation, and only in the late stages with an increase in foliar abscisic acid content. To identify gene regulatory networks (GRNs) mediating the transition between the early and late stages of drought, we used Bayesian network modeling of differentially expressed transcription factor (TF) genes. This approach identified AGAMOUS-LIKE22 (AGL22), as key hub gene in a TF GRN. It has previously been shown that AGL22 is involved in the transition from vegetative state to flowering but here we show that AGL22 expression influences steady state photosynthetic rates and lifetime water use. This suggests that AGL22 uniquely regulates a transcriptional network during drought stress, linking changes in primary metabolism and the initiation of stress responses.

The temporal foliar transcriptome of the perennial C3 desert plant Rhazya stricta in its natural environment.

BACKGROUND: The perennial species Rhazya stricta (R. stricta) grows in arid zones and carries out typical C3 photosynthesis under daily extremes of heat, light intensity and low humidity. In order to identify processes attributable to its adaptation to this harsh environment, we profiled the foliar transcriptome of apical and mature leaves harvested from the field at three time periods of the same day. RESULTS: Next generation sequencing was used to reconstruct the transcriptome and quantify gene expression. 28018 full length transcript sequences were recovered and 45.4% were differentially expressed (DE) throughout the day. We compared our dataset with microarray experiments in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) and other desert species to identify trends in circadian and stress response profiles between species. 34% of the DE genes were homologous to Arabidopsis circadian-regulated genes. Independent of circadian control, significant overlaps with Arabidopsis genes were observed only with heat and salinity/high light stress-responsive genes. Also, groups of DE genes common to other desert plants species were identified. We identified protein families specific to R. stricta which were found to have diverged from their homologs in other species and which were over -expressed at midday. CONCLUSIONS: This study shows that temporal profiling is essential to assess the significance of genes apparently responsive to abiotic stress. This revealed that in R. stricta, the circadian clock is a major regulator of DE genes, even of those annotated as stress-responsive in other species. This may be an important feature of the adaptation of R. stricta to its extreme but predictable environment. However, the majority of DE genes were not circadian-regulated. Of these, some were common to other desert species and others were distinct to R. stricta, suggesting that they are important for the adaptation of such plants to arid environments.

C3 photosynthesis in the desert plant Rhazya stricta is fully functional at high temperatures and light intensities.

The C3 plant Rhazya stricta is native to arid desert environment zones, where it experiences daily extremes of heat, light intensity (PAR) and high vapour pressure deficit (VPD). We measured the photosynthetic parameters in R. stricta in its native environment to assess the mechanisms that permit it to survive in these extreme conditions. Infrared gas exchange analysis examined diel changes in assimilation (A), stomatal conductance (gs ) and transpiration (E) on mature leaves of R. stricta. A/ci analysis was used to determine the effect of temperature on carboxylation capacity (Vc,max ) and the light- and CO2 -saturated rate of photosynthesis (Amax ). Combined chlorophyll fluorescence and gas exchange light response curve analysis at ambient and low oxygen showed that both carboxylation and oxygenation of Rubisco acted as the major sinks for the end products of electron transport. Physiological analysis in conjunction with gene expression analysis suggested that there are two isoforms of Rubisco activase which may provide an explanation for the ability of R. stricta to maintain Rubisco function at high temperatures. The potential to exploit this ability to cope with extreme temperatures is discussed in the context of future crop improvement.