Tuesday, December 15th, 2015 |
Plants rely on transcriptional dynamics to respond to changes in temperature, solar radiation and other aspects of their environment. Most previous studies into the effect of the environment on plant gene expression have been carried out under controlled conditions in a laboratory and do not reflect the full range of gene expression patterns that occur in the natural environment.
Plessis et al used a modeling approach to analyze the gene expression patterns of rice plants grown in the Phillippines in rainfed and irrigated fields during two distinct tropical seasons. Their analysis shows that temperature and light levels have a strong impact on gene expression in the plants. Understanding how multiple climatic factors are integrated dynamically into transcriptional regulation may help us to improve the ability of crops to grow when exposed to drought or other extreme environmental conditions.
Read the full article here.
