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Abstract With global climate change, ecosystems are affected, some of which are more vulnerable than others, such as alpine ecosystems. Microbes play an important role in environmental change in global ecosystems. Plants and microbes are tightly associated, and symbiotic or commensal microorganisms are crucial for plants to respond to stress, particularly for alpine plants. The current study of alpine and subalpine plant microbiome only stays at the community structure scale, but its ecological function and mechanism to help plants to adapt to the harsh environments have not received enough attention. Therefore, it is essential to systematically understand the structure, functions and mechanisms of the microbial community of alpine and subalpine plants, which will be helpful for the conservation of alpine and subalpine plants using synthetic microbial communities in the future. This review mainly summarizes the research progress of the alpine plant microbiome and its mediating mechanism of plant cold adaptation from the following three perspectives: (1) Microbiome community structure and their unique taxa of alpine and subalpine plants; (2) The role of alpine and subalpine plant microbiome in plant adaptation to cold stress; (3) Mechanisms by which the microbiome of alpine and subalpine plants promotes plant adaptation to low-temperature environments. Finally, we also discussed the future application of high-throughput technologies in the development of microbial communities for alpine and subalpine plants. The existing knowledge could improve our understanding of the important role of microbes in plant adaptation to harsh environments. In addition, perspective further studies on microbes’ function confirmation and microbial manipulations in microbiome engineering were also discussed.

Abstract Folate, a pteroylglutamic acid derivative, participates in fundamental cellular metabolism. Homocysteine, an amino acid, serves as an intermediate of the methionine cycle and can be converted back to methionine. Hyperhomocysteinemia is a recognized risk factor for atherosclerotic and cardiovascular diseases. In recent decades, elevated plasma homocysteine levels and low folate status have been observed in many patients with retinal vascular diseases, such as retinal vascular occlusions, diabetic retinopathy, and age-related degeneration. Homocysteine-induced toxicity toward vascular endothelial cells might participate in the formation of retinal vascular diseases. Folate is an important dietary determinant of homocysteine. Folate deficiency is the most common cause of hyperhomocysteinemia. Folate supplementation can eliminate excess homocysteine in plasma. In in vitro experiments, folic acid had a protective effect on vascular endothelial cells against high glucose. Many studies have explored the relationship between folate and various retinal vascular diseases. This review summarizes the most important findings that lead to the conclusion that folic acid supplementation might be a protective treatment in patients with retinal vascular diseases with high homocysteine or glucose status. More research is still needed to validate the effect of folate and its supplementation in retinal vascular diseases.