With global temperatures predicted to continue rising in the near future, understanding how plants respond to small changes in ambient temperature will be fundamental to establishing efficient crop production strategies over coming decades.
The molecular mechanism which makes some plants grow more rapidly when the temperature rises has been identified by researchers at the University of Bristol in a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The Bristol scientists, led by Kerry Franklin, with colleagues at the University of Minnesota and the John Innes Centre in Norwich, found that raising ambient temperature from 20?C to 28?C promoted the rapid elongation of stems in plants with the gene PHYTOCHROME INTERACTING FACTOR 4 (PIF4) . Such rapid growth can have negative impacts on plant stability and crop yields. In a previous study, published in Current Biology, Franklin's lab found that this response is missing in plants that lack the PIF4 gene. This new study shows that PIF4 can increase the production of the plant growth hormone auxin and it is this that leads to the exaggerated height of plants grown at high temperature. The team have further shown that this then leads to the activation of auxin-responsive genes in stems, providing a key mechanistic insight into this important growth response. Although we are still at the early stages of understanding how temperature affects plant growth, research of this kind provides a tantalising glimpse of how science may be able to alleviate some of the damaging effects of global warming.
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