A new take on organelle-mediated stress sensing in plants

Plants are able to adjust phenotype in response to changes in the environment. This system depends on an internal capacity to sense environmental conditions and to process this information to plant response. Recent studies have pointed to mitochondria and plastids as important environmental sensors, capable of perceiving stressful conditions and triggering gene expression, epigenomic, metabolic and phytohormone changes in the plant. These processes involve integrated gene networks that ultimately modulate the energy balance between growth and plant defense. This review attempts to link several unusual recent findings into a comprehensive hypothesis for the regulation of plant phenotypic plasticity.