Janet Braam, a plant biologist at Rice University Do plants sleep We see other animals sleep, wild birds in the trees . Do insects regularly turn in at some point each day? What about plants, from crops to invasive species? For human circadian cycle determines when we should sleep and when we should wake up: sunlight enters our eyes each morning, triggering cells in the brain that control levels of the hormone melatonin, which, in part, controls drowsiness. The more melatonin, the sleepier we are—levels drop in the daytime and rise at night. And while our main sleep clock resides in the brain, we also have clock genes in nearly all of the cell types throughout the body, and vital physiological processes occur as we sleep. we know that plants monitor day length and thus can prepare for seasonal changes (like winter) before the weather actually changes.” During the day, plants soak up sunlight during photosynthesis, the process they use to get energy. But when the sun goes down, plants’ opportunity to eat disappears and other physiological processes take over, including energy metabolism and growth. Plants sleep at night, when photosynthesis ceases to take place and respiration alone continues. At night, the glucose prepared during the day is rapidly translocated through the phloem tissue to different parts of the plant and is stored in the form of insoluble starch. The sunflower sways back and forth as the sun rises and falls the circadian rhythm in certain plants also determines when they launch chemical defenses against predators. A set of plants kept on a normal day/night cycle anticipated the time the caterpillars typically eat and gave off a pungent chemical to discourage feeding. Plants forced on a light cycle 12 hours out of phase didn’t do this and were thus chewed up. Robertson McClung, a plant geneticist at Dartmouth, points out that, just like any other organism, plants need to eat and protect themselves from predators To survive, they must take advantage of various stages of the day to maximize food intake and growth. They also sense the cyclical activity of insects and other predators to prep chemical defenses, or small changes in temperature or the timing of sunlight to prepare for different seasons. What does this mean for us? Understanding how to control the nutritional composition of the vegetables in our fridge could improve our diet and health—say, by eating a piece of cabbage when 4MSO (anti-cancer properties )is at its peak. Manipulating the chemical signals of plants could also provide an option for pest control, or encourage higher crop yields. https://youtube/watch?v=BLTcVNyOhUc
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:29:16 +0000
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