Global temperatures and harmful atmospheric gases will continue to rise in the decades to come and adversely affect plant physiology. Plants are inducing mechanisms, which helps them to cope with such stressful environmental conditions. The response includes initiation of redox-signaling, epigenetic processes (e. g. histone modifications and DNA-methylation) and transcriptional reprogramming. Despite the recognized importance of cellular redox-mechanisms, the identity and function of the nuclear redox-signaling that is associated with epigenetic processes and stress tolerance mechanisms remains largely obscure. Moreover, most environmental stress studies in plants have probed only a few climate parameters in isolation. Insights from these studies are difficult to extrapolate to realistic climate conditions. This project aims to address these limitations. We will simulate not only single stress conditions, such as enhanced temperature, drought, ozone or CO₂, but also a combination of these conditions. Such a complex and more realistic climate scenario will represent anticipated future parameters. We will grow large number of A. thaliana wild type plants and plants with
impaired redox homeostasis (gsnor-ko) under these conditions. The simulation of future climate conditions will be based on real data of the German Weather Service. Our experimental set up promises to advance our basic understanding of how plant nuclear redoxsignaling is functioning in response to changing climate conditions, how the plant epigenome responds to such different climate scenarios, how this response affects plant performance and if the redox system in general is a key player at the interface between environment and plant epigenome and phenotypes. In detail, we want to identify redox-regulated chromatin modifier and analyse, at which genomic regions significant climate change-dependent changes in DNA methylation and histone modifications occur and how these changes affect gene expression in order to adapt plants performance to the future climate conditions. In sum, the complex environmental conditions will allow a more realistic insight into plants´ response to climate change and how redox-mechanisms coordinate epigenetic processes and transcriptional reprogramming under these conditions.