Background
As global temperatures rise, extreme heat is becoming an increasingly serious challenge for plant growth and agricultural productivity. While most crop species struggle at temperatures above 35 °C, some plants naturally thrive under far hotter conditions, offering valuable opportunities to understand the biological mechanisms that enable life under extreme heat.
Thermophilic plants such as Tidestromia oblongifolia, a desert C4 species native to Death Valley, provide a powerful system for studying these adaptations. Research has shown that this plant can rapidly adjust its photosynthetic thermal optimum, accelerate growth under extreme heat, and undergo coordinated changes across physiology, cell structure, gene expression, and metabolism, allowing it to maintain high photosynthetic performance at temperatures exceeding 45 °C.
This work began in the Rhee Lab in 2018 with efforts to understand the mechanisms underlying this remarkable heat resilience. Following the publication of Karine Prado and colleagues’ study characterizing the heat acclimation of T. oblongifolia, the Plant Heat-Resilience Research Hub was created to share these discoveries and support ongoing research into plant thermal adaptation.
Goals for the PHRRH
The Plant Heat-Resilience Research Hub is designed to serve as a central resource for research on thermophilic plants and the mechanisms that enable plant survival under extreme heat. The hub aims to:
- Share discoveries about heat-adapted plant species
- Provide open access to research projects, datasets, and analytical tools
- Support collaboration across institutions and disciplines
- Highlight biological mechanisms that enable plants to withstand extreme temperatures
- Provide a foundation for translating insights from thermophilic plants into crop improvement
As the hub grows, it will expand to include additional resources and contributions from the research community, such as:
- Profiles of additional thermophilic plant species
- Comparative datasets across species and environments
- Summaries of mechanisms involved in heat adaptation
- Field expedition reports and research updates
- Tutorials, experimental protocols, and analysis pipelines
- Educational materials for students and outreach partners
- Community-contributed datasets and collaborative project pages
People
The PHRRH brings together researchers from multiple institutions working across plant physiology, molecular biology, systems biology, bioinformatics, and ecology. This collaborative effort includes faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, undergraduate researchers, and international partners who contribute diverse expertise to understanding how plants survive and thrive under extreme heat. Together, these researchers form an interdisciplinary network advancing the study of thermophilic plants and the biological mechanisms underlying plant heat resilience.
Get in Touch
We welcome inquiries about collaboration, data sharing, training opportunities, and research partnerships. Please reach out if you have questions or would like additional information.