Cold tolerance genetics:
This is a really nice overview of stress response mechanisms:
http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/63/4/1593.long
Drought, salt, and temperature stress-induced metabolic rearrangements and regulatory networks Julia Krasensky and Claudia Jonak
Another general article which gives an overview of present research:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3129041/
Engineering Cold Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants
Gulzar S Sanghera,1 Shabir H Wani,*,2 Wasim Hussain,1 and N.B Singh3
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Cold tolerance genetics and cytoplasmic inheritance:
pubs.aic.ca/doi/pdf/10.4141/cjps80-022
Reciprocal cross analysis of growth component stages in tomatoes under two temperature regimes. Li TSC, Hornby CA
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The nuclear and cytoplasmic effects on seven growth component stages in tomatoes were studied in a reciprocal cross experiment involving two parental cultivars, Bonny Best and Immur Prior Beta, and their reciprocal hybrids. These were grown under the two temperature regimes in greenhouses, l7"C-21'C and lO"C-13"C respectively.
There was evidence that cytoplasmic effects were relatively important for some of the characteristics under stress temperature condition. It is suggested that the cytoplasmic effects and genic-cytoplasm interactions should be considered during selection for tomatoes under subnormal temperature conditions. "
pubs.aic.ca/doi/pdf/10.4141/cjps80-182
Li, T. S. C. (Li, S. C); Hornby, C. A., 1980: Reciprocal crosses analysis of three physiological characters in tomatoes under two temperature regimes. Canadian Journal of Plant Science 60(4): 1289-1293
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The nuclear and cytoplasmic effects in the net photosynthesis rate, leaf area and net assimilation rate in tomatos were studied in a reciprocal cross experiment involving two parental cultivars, Bonny Best and Immur Prior Beta, and their reciprocal hybrids. Plants were grown under two temperature regimes in growth chambers,23 + l'C and 12 -+ l'C, respectively. It was concluded that nuclear composition affected all three characters. Although the cytoplasmic effect sometimes revealed its influence, it was not large enough to warrent consideration in breeding studies."
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www.publish.csiro.au/?act=view_file&file_id=SA0403661.pdf
Plastome from high-altitude Lycopersicon hirsutum does not improve
low-temperature tolerance of cold-sensitive Lycopersicon esculentum.
JH Venema, PR van Hasselt
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The results of this study show that the L. hirsutum plastome did not affect low temperature tolerance of photosynthesis in the tomato cybrid. This indicates that low temperature tolerance of photosynthesis is controled by the nuclear genome, which encodes 80−90% of the chloroplast proteins.....The observation that the cybrid was more susceptible to chill-induced photoinhibition of PSII than L. esculentum and L. hirsutum, suggested that cybridisation rendered the chloroplast more susceptible to light stress... In contrast to LRC and the cybrid, Pmax of L. hirsutum was significantly higher in response to growth at suboptimal temperature."
It's interesting that the cybrid was not very viable, some other work has also mentioned that rare recombinations of mtDNA have been observed in interspecies crosses, instead of the usual uniparental transmission. Possibly the genetic barriers to the crosses exist at the level of signalling between nuclear and cytoplasmic systems? (note Venema's work made a cybrid with the plastome, not mitochondria afaict)
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In peas, small HSP's, LEA and other stress response molecules are encoded in mtDNA and induced by cold stress in isolated mitochondria:
http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/140/1/326.full
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