Exhibit a series of distinct morphological, physiological, biochemical, and genetic protective mechanisms to resist or respond to extreme desiccation. The folding and reexpansion of leaves are the most obvious morphological changes that occur during desiccation and subsequent rewatering; folding might prevent the production of reactive oxygen species induced by light during drying and rehydration. Inward shrinking of the cell wall and dehydration-induced membrane shrinking are typical responses of resurrection plants to desiccation. In these plants, photosynthetic activity is retained during mild drought, is lost during severe desiccation, and returns upon subsequent rehydration. Resurrection plants do not necessarily share the same physiological strategies, and sometimes even employ completely opposite strategies to deal with extreme desiccation. For example, the osmoprotectant proline is widely used to resist cellular dehydration in plants. However, whereas some resurrection plants accumulate proline following desiccation, others do not. In addition, some resurrection plants lose their chlorophyll and degrade their thylakoid membranes to prevent the production of photosynthetically generated ROS during dehydration. The ability of resurrection plants to maintain antioxidant activity even after severe cellular dehydration is thought to account in large part for their distinctive capacity to resist desiccation. Osmoregulatory substances, such as sucrose, alleviate cellular dehydration and oxidative stress in resurrection plants. Many genes that function in drought tolerance have been cloned from resurrection plants and characterized. Transformation of certain plants with some of these genes improves drought resistance significantly. The powerful approaches of transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have enabled extensive investigation of the mechanisms that resurrection plants use to resist severe dehydration at the levels of global changes in gene expression and the abundances of proteins and metabolites. Lipid metabolism during and following desiccation was recently reported in Craterostigma plantagineum. However, especially given that the tolerance strategies used by resurrection plants are often species-specific, little is known about how molecular species of membrane lipids respond to severe dehydration and subsequent rehydration, and how the changes in lipid profiles contribute to ability to survive extreme desiccation. Maintenance of membrane integrity and fluidity is of critical importance to ensure that resurrection plants can survive cellular dehydration. Several membrane components, such as phosphatidic acid, sphingolipids, and sterols, have particular effects on membrane permeability. A widely accepted speculation about the desiccation tolerance of resurrection plants is that although they Fulvestrant experience membrane damage during dehydration, they can then repair this damage during their subsequent rehydration. This suggests significant changes in their membrane lipids during both desiccation and rewatering.