Berivan Ozlem Gumus

a woman looks through a microscope in a lab ALT: a woman looks through a microscope in a lab

Thanks for reading!
If plants could talk, they’d probably say: “Don’t leave me to fight a heatwave and hungry bugs without backup!”
Let’s listen. Let’s prepare. 🌍 @filarramendi.bsky.social @crueuniversidades.bsky.social #ClimateChange #PlantScience #HiloTesis

Understanding this inner hormonal “emergency system” means we can:
✅ Use fewer pesticides
✅ Grow crops that survive extreme weather
✅ Feed more people with less stress on the planet
This is not just plant science. It’s future-proof farming.

But not all plants could do it.
🛑 SA and ABA mutants made fewer defense chemicals.
📉 Their metabolism stayed in neutral while stress demanded high gear.

We also analyzed metabolites, the chemical toolkit of the plant.
In stress mode, plants shifted strategy:
🔄 Less energy for growth
🛡️ More for defense
Like stocking up on helmets instead of perfume.

Inside the leaves? Hormone chaos.
📈 Some signals spiked.
📉 Others stayed flat.
⚠️ A few mutants activated unexpected hormone responses in a desperate attempt to cope.

Photosynthesis took a serious hit in some plants.
Their gas exchange became unstable, like trying to stay cool without sweating, while tiny mites bite non-stop.

But it wasn’t always what we expected. Some mutants turned up other hormones, overcompensating for what they lacked. Like pressing all the panic buttons at once!

Here’s what we found:
🕷️ No JA? Plants were vulnerable to pests.
💧 No ABA? Water regulation broke down and more sensitive to mites.
🛡️ No SA? Plants struggled to manage gas exchange & photosynthesis and had more damage.
Coordination was key.

We measured:
🕷️ Leaf damage from mites
💨 Water loss
📉 Gas exchange & photosynthesis (How well the plants "breathed"?)
🧪 Hormone levels
⚗️ Metabolites — tiny internal chemicals that act like shields or SOS signals

We tested:
🍅 Regular tomato cultivars
❌ JA-deficient mutants
💧 ABA-deficient mutants
🛡️ SA-deficient mutants
Then we asked: How did they cope?

This time, we raised the stakes.
🔥 Heat
💧 Drought
🕷️ Spider mites
Applied separately… and all together.
We wanted to mimic real-world farming stress.

From these results, we picked key mutants and moved on to tomato.🍅 Why tomato? Because what works in the lab needs to work in the field.

We let the spider mites on the plants and measured the damage. Plants lacking JA defenses suffered the most, confirming its key role against pests..
But ABA and SA mutants also showed more damage.

Think of these mutants like phones with missing apps:
📵 No drought alert
🚫 Pest radar offline
⚠️ Notifications all mixed up
We wanted to know: Which ones fail? Which adapt?

We started in the lab with Arabidopsis, a tiny plant with big insights. We used 20 mutant lines, each missing one or more hormone signals, to test how they responded to spider mite attacks.

a cartoon of a man talking into a microphone and saying next question ALT: a cartoon of a man talking into a microphone and saying next question

So we asked:
🤔 How does a plant fight spider mites while also dealing with drought and heat?
🧠 Can its hormone network handle all of it at once, or will it crash?

Meet the three hormone heroes of my research:
💧 ABA (abscisic acid) – helps retain water during drought
🕷️ JA (jasmonic acid) – defends against pests
🛡️ SA (salicylic acid) – boosts immunity and balances stress
But here’s the twist: these signals don’t always get along.

Plants can’t run. Can’t shout. But they can “communicate”.
They use hormones, chemical messages like:
💧 “I’m thirsty!”
🕷️ “We’re under attack!”
🛡️ “Activate defense!”
But when multiple threats strike, messages get scrambled.

With climate change, crops face more heatwaves and drought. But it doesn’t stop there…
Pests like the two-spotted spider mite are thriving in warm conditions, damaging crops and reducing yields.
Tiny. Deadly. A true plant vampire. 🕷️

☀️💧🕷️ Heat. Drought. Pests.
Now imagine facing all of them without moving, drinking, or asking for help. That’s what plants deal with. Welcome to my PhD project on helping plants survive extreme stress by decoding their inner “conversation.” @uji.es #HiloTesis