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Plants point the way to coping with climate change
January 10, 2007Roses flowering at Christmas and snow-free ski resorts this winter suggest that climate change is already with us and our farmers and growers will need ways of adapting. Scientists studying how plants have naturally evolved to cope with the changing seasons of temperate climates have made a discovery that could help us to breed new varieties of crops, able to thrive in a changing climate.
The importance of the discovery is that it reveals how a species has developed different responses to different climates in a short period of time.
Researchers at the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich, UK have been examining how plants use the cold of winter to time their flowering for the relative warmth of spring. This process, called vernalization, varies even within the same plant species, depending on local climate. In Scandinavia, where winter temperatures can vary widely, the model plant, Arabidopsis has a slow vernalization response to prevent plants from being 'fooled' into flowering by a short mid-winter thaw. One particular gene, named FLC, delays flowering over the winter and the research team discovered how cold turns off FLC and what keeps it off during growth in spring. In the UK plants only need four weeks of cold to stably inactivate FLC, allowing plants to start their spring flowering early. Arabidopsis plants in Sweden have a mechanism that requires 14 straight weeks of winter cold before FLC is stably inactivated. This prevents the plants flowering only to be hit with another month of harsh winter weather.
Research leader at JIC, Professor Caroline Dean, explains: "We studied levels of the FLC gene in Arabidopsis plants from different parts of the world expecting to find regional variations that correlated with how much cold was required to switch FLC off. We discovered that FLC levels in autumn and the rate of reduction during the early phases of cold were quite similar in Arabidopsis plants from Edinburgh and N. Scandinavia . However, we found big variations in how much cold was required to achieve stable inactivation of FLC. FLC was stably silenced much faster in Edinburgh than it was in N. Scandinavia and a genetic analysis showed that differences in the FLC gene itself contributed to this variation."
Professor Dean said: "It looks like the variation in this mechanism to adapt the timing of flowering to different winter conditions has evolved extremely quickly. We hope that by understanding how plants have adapted to different climates it will give us a head-start in breeding crops able to cope with global warming."
The JIC scientists worked in collaboration with a team at the University of Southern California and were funded by the UK's main public funders of biological and environmental sciences, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council.
Professor Julia Goodfellow, BBSRC Chief Executive, commented: "As well as working to prevent climate change we need to be able to harness natural methods to adapt food crops to cope with changed and hostile climates around the world. This is an example of how basic science can make a practical difference."
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Research leader at JIC, Professor Caroline Dean, explains: "We studied levels of the FLC gene in Arabidopsis plants from different parts of the world expecting to find regional variations that correlated with how much cold was required to switch FLC off. We discovered that FLC levels in autumn and the rate of reduction during the early phases of cold were quite similar in Arabidopsis plants from Edinburgh and N. Scandinavia . However, we found big variations in how much cold was required to achieve stable inactivation of FLC. FLC was stably silenced much faster in Edinburgh than it was in N. Scandinavia and a genetic analysis showed that differences in the FLC gene itself contributed to this variation."
Professor Dean said: "It looks like the variation in this mechanism to adapt the timing of flowering to different winter conditions has evolved extremely quickly. We hope that by understanding how plants have adapted to different climates it will give us a head-start in breeding crops able to cope with global warming."
The JIC scientists worked in collaboration with a team at the University of Southern California and were funded by the UK's main public funders of biological and environmental sciences, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council.
Professor Julia Goodfellow, BBSRC Chief Executive, commented: "As well as working to prevent climate change we need to be able to harness natural methods to adapt food crops to cope with changed and hostile climates around the world. This is an example of how basic science can make a practical difference."
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
Arabidopsis Current Events and Arabidopsis News RSSMaize cell wall genes identified, giving boost to biofuel research
Purdue University scientists have helped identify and group the genes thought to be responsible for cell wall development in maize, an effort that expands their ability to discover ways to produce the biomass best suited for biofuels production.
Pathogen protection and virulence: Dark side of fungal membrane protein revealed
Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and Montana State University have discovered a fungal protein that plays a key role in causing disease in plants and animals and which also shields the pathogen from oxidative stress.
Common weed could provide clues on aging and cancer
A common weed and human cancer cells could provide some very uncommon details about DNA structure and its relationship with telomeres and how they affect cellular aging and cancer, according to a team led by scientists from Texas A&M University and the University of Cincinnati (UC).
Popping the cork on biofuel agriculture
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a novel enzyme responsible for the formation of suberin - the woody, waxy, cell-wall substance found in cork.
Oh, brother, it's true: Plants can recognize their siblings and now we know how
Plants may not have eyes and ears, but they can recognize their siblings, and researchers at the University of Delaware have discovered how.
When you've doubled your genes, what's 1 chromosome more or less?
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Plants on steroids: Key missing link discovered
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Hormone clue to root growth
Plant roots provide the crops we eat with water, nutrients and anchorage. Understanding how roots grow and how hormones control that growth is crucial to improving crop yields, which will be necessary to address food security and produce better biofuels.
Plants' internal clock can improve climate-change models
The ability of plants to tell the time, a mechanism common to all living beings, enables them to survive, grow and reproduce.
Plant protein 'doorkeepers' block invading microbes, study finds
A group of plant proteins that "shut the door" on bacteria that would otherwise infect the plant's leaves has been identified for the first time by a team of researchers in Denmark, at the University of California, Davis, and at UC Berkeley.
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