How Plants Regulate Flowering
Secondary | Environment | Views: 778
- Dr. Naeem discusses how plants use their gene expression patterns to make food, chemicals and medicines for us.
- Plants produce these things through flowering. Have you ever noticed that in early spring or summer, we see dazzling displays of flowers? Those flowers are where pollination takes place and plants produce seeds, which passes on to next generations, but also gives us crops to feed animals and ourselves.
- Why is flowering so important? With weather patterns changing, global warming, plants are confused about when to flower with all these temperature changes. Plants use their gene expression patterns and metabolism to know when to do this.
- What if plants germinated in autumn and flowered in winter? Cold temperatures would destroy floral structures, and the plant would not be able to produce food.
- A gene called the flowering locus repressor doesn’t allow plants to flower, since cold exposure switches off gene. DNA becomes jumbled in the cold, gene is switched off for plants life. After winter cold period, when temperatures warm the plant can differentiate and know it is time to flower and produce food for us…AMAZING!
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