Principles and mechanisms of plant acclimation to heat stress

Plants are able to acclimate to heat stress (HS) at the level of individual cells and the whole organism. With extreme temperature events becoming more frequent owing to climate change, it is critical to understand the molecular responses of plants to HS. In this Review, we discuss how plants sense and signal HS, and how this leads to dynamic transcriptional and cellular responses. Plants plastically integrate high temperature signals with other environmental and endogenous cues. Across eukaryotes, heat shock factor transcription factors orchestrate transcriptional responses to HS and are delicately regulated. Recent emerging evidence showed a close link between HS sensing and responses with the formation of biomolecular condensates, as well as the chromatin-based HS memory. Ultimately, this knowledge may be harnessed to secure crop yields.