Individual vs. combinatorial effect of elevated CO2 conditions and salinity stress on Arabidopsis thaliana liquid cultures: Comparing the early molecular response using time-series transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses

We observed that a) high salinity has stronger effect than elevated CO2 at both the transcriptional and metabolic levels, b) the transcriptional responses to the salinity and combined stresses exhibit strong similarity, implying a robust transcriptional machinery acting to the salinity stress independent of the co-occurrence of elevated CO2, c) the combinatorial effect of the two perturbations on the metabolic physiology is milder than of the salinity stress alone. Metabolomic analysis suggested that the beneficial role of elevated CO2 on salt-stressed plants within the timeframe of this study should be attributed to the provided additional resources; these allow the plants to respond to high salinity without having to forfeit other major metabolic functions, and d) 9 h-12 h and 24 h of treatment coincide with significant changes in the metabolic physiology under any of the investigated stresses. Significant differences between the acute and longer term responses were observed at both molecular levels.This study contributes large-scale dynamic omic data from two levels of cellular function for a plant system under various stresses. It provides an additional example of the power of integrated omic analyses for the comprehensive study of the molecular physiology of complex biological systems. Moreover, taking into consideration the particular interest of the two investigated perturbations in plant biotechnology, enhanced understanding of the molecular physiology of the plants under these conditions could lead to the design of novel metabolic engineering strategies to increase the resistance of commercial crops to salinity stress.In the recent years, many physiological studies in various organisms concern the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms underlying the response of a particular biological system to combined perturbations [e.g. [1-4]]. These studies are triggered mainly by the fact that in most real-world problems in life sciences in general, and in plant rese