Heat waves hit plants hardest when they flower: high temperatures damage pollen, fewer seeds are formed and yields drop. A new study in Cell Reports shows that a beneficial bacterium can protect exactly this sensitive phase – and explains how it does so.
What the team found
Researchers at KAUST, led by first author and PhD student Anam Fatima and co-led by Heribert Hirt and Kirti Shekhawat, studied the plant growth-promoting bacterium Enterobacter sp. SA187 in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana under heat stress.
- Plants colonised by SA187 had about 48 % more viable pollen under heat than plants without the bacterium.
- Their pollen also germinated better, and the plants reproduced more successfully at high temperatures.
How it works
The bacterium activates the plant hormone ethylene. Ethylene in turn switches on REF6, a protein that loosens the packaging of DNA (chromatin). This makes heat-response genes accessible, so the plant can activate its protective programme more effectively. Plants that could not sense ethylene or lacked REF6 did not benefit from the bacterium – confirming that this ethylene–REF6 module is the key mechanism.
Why it matters
Crop losses during flowering are one of the biggest risks of a warming climate. The study shows that beneficial microbes can strengthen plant resilience at the level of gene regulation – a nature-based approach that could help keep crops productive in hotter conditions.
Reference
Fatima, A., Shekhawat, K., Alidrissi, L., Alzayed, W., Farooq, H. U., Nagarajan, A. P., Gutierrez-Marcos, J. & Hirt, H. (2026). Ethylene-REF6 regulatory module enables endophyte-mediated thermotolerance of plant growth and reproduction. Cell Reports 45.
Read the study: Cell Reports (DOI) · PDF · All publications 2026
Source: KAUST Discovery, 15 October 2026.
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