Using AI to decodeing the mechanisms that enable plants to adapt to climate change
An international research team led by the UPC has used advanced machine learning techniques to identify, for the first time, the key genes that enable plants to respond simultaneously to multiple forms of environmental stress. The study, published in Nature Communications, presents a new approach to analysing multifactorial stress at the genomic scale and paves the way for designing crops that are more resilient to climate change.
Nov 12, 2025
What are the internal mechanisms that allow plants to survive under adverse environmental conditions? To answer this question, an international research team led by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC) has applied artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning, to study plant responses to stress from a multifactorial perspective. The research, published in Nature Communications, has provided new insights into plant resilience to phenomena such as drought, extreme temperatures, and other adverse environmental conditions caused by climate change.
The study is led by Raul Sánchez Muñoz, a Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral researcher in the UPC’s Department of Agri-Food Engineering and Biotechnology, and professor Isiah Zaplana Agut, from the Department of Automatic Control, in collaboration with researchers from Ghent University (Belgium) and Masaryk University (Czech Republic).
More than 500 transcriptomes analysed
The novelty of the research lies in the fact that, for the first time, an extensive meta-analysis has been combined with an unsupervised machine learning algorithm to analyse more than 500 transcriptomes—the complete set of RNA molecules present in a cell—of the model plant arabidopsis thaliana under different stress conditions.
This large-scale, data-driven analysis has made it possible to identify a stress gene core, a set of key genes involved in plant tolerance to ten simultaneous environmental stressors, rather than to isolated conditions. One major finding of the research team was the regulatory role of ethylene, which acts as a critical factor in this resilience.
Ethylene is a plant hormone present at all stages of plant development, from germination to fruit ripening. This research now demonstrates that it also plays a central role as an integrator of the plant’s response to multiple simultaneous stresses: it coordinates and modulates the activation of the key genes that underpin this resilience capacity.
As researcher Raul Sánchez explains, “identifying this gene network and the role of ethylene opens the door to more efficient, holistic strategies for developing new plant varieties that are better adapted to climate change, through both genetic engineering and conventional breeding programmes.”
Researcher Isiah Zaplana adds that “understanding how plants adapt their physiology to withstand severe and often multifactorial stress conditions in nature is crucial in the current context of the climate crisis.”
Towards more resilient crops
The identification of these genes, which has been biologically validated by the research team, opens new possibilities for agricultural biotechnology. The identified genes represent potential biotechnological targets for the design and development of new crop varieties that are better equipped to withstand drought, extreme temperatures, and other adverse environmental conditions caused by climate change. This establishes a solid framework for advancing a more resilient and sustainable agriculture.
