背景回顾：Current scenario of climate change has led to increase number of studies describing main drivers in abiotic stress. Recent findings suggest that alternative splicing (AS) has a critical role in controlling plant response to high temperature. AS is a mechanism that allows organisms to create an assortment of RNA transcripts and proteins using single gene information. 

提出问题：However, the most important insights suggested about stress AS could not be rigorously addressed because research has been focused on model species which only covered a narrow phylogenetic and life-cycle spectrum. Thus, AS degree of diversification among more dissimilar taxa in heat response is still largely unknown. 

主要研究：To fill this gap, the present study employs a systems biology approach to examine how AS landscape responds and ‘remembers’ from heat stress in conifers, a group which have received little attention even though their position can solve key evolutionary questions. 

结果：Contrary to angiosperms, we found that potential intron retention may not be the most prevalent type of AS. Furthermore, our integrative analysis with metabolome and proteome data places splicing as the main source of variation during the response. Finally, we evaluated possible acquired long-term splicing-memory in a diverse subset of events and, although this mechanism seems to be conserved in seed plants, AS dynamics are divergent. 

结论：These discoveries reveal the particular way of remembering past temperature changes in long-lived plants and open the door to include species with unique features to determine the extent of conservation in gene expression regulation.

 摘 要 

目前全球的气候变化导致很多研究针对非生物胁迫的主要驱动因子。最近的研究显示，可变剪切在植物响应高温的过程中发挥重要作用。可变剪切是一种允许生物体利用单个基因座信息，获得多个RNA转录本，进而获得多个蛋白的一种机制。但是，有关胁迫可变剪切的重要发现并不具有普遍性意义，因为现有的研究主要局限在模式物种中，这些物种仅仅代表了植物系统发育上的一小分支，并且生活周期都比较短。因此，系统发育关系较远的不同物种在热胁迫所导致的可变剪切方面的比较在很大程度上还是未知的。为了填补这一空白，作者利用一个系统生物学方法来探索针叶树种中可变剪切如何响应并“记忆”热胁迫，针叶树种因其特殊的系统发育位置，能够解决关键的演化问题，但很少受到关注。与被子植物相反，作者发现潜在的内含子保留可能不是最常见的可变剪切类型。此外，作者结合代谢组和蛋白组数据，发现剪切是热胁迫响应过程中的主要变异来源。最终，作者评估了不同事件子集中的获得性长期剪接记忆，尽管该机制在种子植物中似乎是保守的，但可变剪切动态是不同的。本文的研究发现揭示了一个长寿植物中“记忆”过去温度变化的特殊方式。