{
  "abstract": "Grasses in the Panicoideae, Aristidoideae, Chloridoideae, Micrairoideae, Arundinoideae, and Danthonioideae (PACMAD) clade independently colonized cold environments from warm-climate ancestors, but whether their molecular responses to freezing reflect shared evolutionary solutions or lineage-specific innovations remains poorly understood at the protein level. We used comparative proteomics to test whether protein-level cold responses show stronger cross-species conservation than previously observed at the transcript level. We quantified seasonal rhizome proteomes (winter vs summer) from five PACMAD species grown in a common-garden experiment exposed to sustained sub-zero temperatures, identified differentially abundant proteins, and compared fold-change magnitudes across species using orthogroup-based correlation analyses. We further examined LEA3 protein structure through hydropathy profiling and motif analysis. Shared cold-responsive proteins showed higher cross-species fold-change correlation (ρ = 0.80) than background proteins (ρ = 0.45), despite greater divergence in baseline abundance. This correlation advantage persisted (Δρ = 0.27) after controlling for effect-size selection by comparing shared cold-responsive proteins against magnitude-matched single-species responses. LEA3 was the only ortholog elevated across all five species, with cold-tolerant species containing more tandem 11-mer repeats than the cold-sensitive maize. Two species accumulated multiple LEA3 paralogs, increasing total LEA3 abundance. Independent evolution of freezing tolerance in PACMAD grasses is consistent with evolutionary constraints on protein-level response magnitude, reflecting the retention of an ancestral protective capacity. Structural divergence of LEA3 in maize suggests that transcriptional induction alone does not ensure freezing tolerance; functional protection likely requires intact motif architecture.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Institute for Genomic Diversity, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America",
    "Newe Ya’ar Research Center, Institute of Plant Sciences, Agricultural Research Organization – Volcani Institute, Ramat Yishay, Israel",
    "Sesaco Corporation, Austin, Texas, United States of America",
    "Division of Biological Sciences and Interdisciplinary Plant Group, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America",
    "School of Integrative Plant Sciences, Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America",
    "USDA-ARS, Ithaca, New York, United States of America",
    "School of Integrative Plant Science, Plant Biology Section, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America",
    "Proteomics and Metabolomics Facility, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America"
  ],
  "article_type": "Research Article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 14,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Elad Oren"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Jingjing Zhai"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        2
      ],
      "name": "Travis E. Rooney"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Ruthie Angelovici"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        4
      ],
      "name": "Charles O. Hale"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        5
      ],
      "name": "Lara J. Brindisi"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        6
      ],
      "name": "Sheng-Kai Hsu"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        7
      ],
      "name": "Christine M. Gault"
    },
    {
      "name": "Jian Hua"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thuy La"
    },
    {
      "name": "Nicholas Lepak"
    },
    {
      "name": "Qin Fu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Edward S. Buckler"
    },
    {
      "name": "Maria Cinta Romay"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/783s429ber1t2.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1371/journal.pone.0358458",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "783s429ber1t2",
  "issns": [
    "1932-6203"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0358458",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "1110|Plant Stress Responses and Tolerance"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Biochemistry/Proteins/Antifreeze proteins"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Biochemistry/Proteins/Protein structure/Protein folding"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Biochemistry/Proteins/Proteomes"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Biochemistry/Proteomics"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Cryobiology/Cold hardiness/Antifreeze proteins"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Evolutionary biology/Molecular evolution"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Molecular biology/Macromolecular structure analysis/Protein structure/Protein folding"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Biology and life sciences/Organisms/Eukaryota/Plants/Grasses/Maize"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Earth sciences/Seasons"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Physical sciences/Physics/Classical mechanics/Mechanical stress/Thermal stresses"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Research and analysis methods/Animal studies/Experimental organism systems/Model organisms/Maize"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Research and analysis methods/Animal studies/Experimental organism systems/Plant and algal models/Maize"
    ],
    [
      "plos",
      "/Research and analysis methods/Model organisms/Maize"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7221816954",
  "pdf_url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0358458&type=printable",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-14",
  "publisher": "Public Library of Science",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/783s429ber1t2.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:23Z",
      "native_id": "10.1371/journal.pone.0358458",
      "source": "plos",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0358458"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biochemistry",
      "origin": "plos:molecular biology",
      "subfield": "molecular-biology"
    },
    {
      "field": "biochemistry",
      "origin": "plos:proteomics",
      "subfield": "proteomics-metabolomics"
    },
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "plos:evolutionary biology",
      "subfield": "evolutionary-biology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Evolutionary constraint on a core winter proteome across independently cold-adapted PACMAD grasses",
  "title_text": "Evolutionary constraint on a core winter proteome across independently cold-adapted PACMAD grasses",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:23Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/783s429ber1t2",
  "venue": "PLOS One",
  "versions": []
}