Research Pinpoints How Plants Know When to Flower
Date: 29.5.2012
Determining the proper time to flower, important if a plant is to reproduce successfully, involves a sequence of molecular events, a plant's circadian clock and sunlight.
Understanding how flowering works in the simple plant used in this study -- Arabidopsis -- should lead to a better understanding of how the same genes work in more complex plants grown as crops such as rice, wheat and barley, according to Takato Imaizumi, a University of Washington assistant professor of biology and corresponding author of a paper in the May 25 issue of the journal Science.
Imaizumi and the paper's co-authors investigated what's called the FKF1 protein, which they suspected was a key player in the mechanism by which plants recognize seasonal change and know when to flower. FKF1 protein is a photoreceptor, meaning it is activated by sunlight.
By Sandra Hines
