You sunflowers Surprisingly, they get their name due to their peculiar movement that follows the Sun's path across the sky, from east to west, as the Earth rotates.
This phenomenon is known as heliotropism, and it continues to be a fascinating enigma for plant biologists. In a recent study published in the journal PLOS Biology, the possibility that sunflowers perform this movement in response to light, as observed in other plants, was ruled out.
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The researchers suggest that sunflowers' ability to track the sun is likely linked to a complexity of more intricate processes. They highlight that the explanation for this behavior goes beyond the typical responses to light found in other plant species.
Due to their soil-fixed nature, plants face challenges when the light needed for photosynthesis is blocked by obstacles or shadows.
Many species have developed strategies, such as growth or stretching, to move toward the light. These movements are governed by specific molecular systems.
A well-known example is the phototropic response, in which proteins such as phototropins sense blue light unevenly distributed over a young plant.
This important process triggers the redistribution of growth hormones, a result of the plant's orientation toward the light source.
Considering this knowledge, the scientific community long believed that sunflowers employed similar mechanisms to guide their rotational movement around their axis.
In the solar tracking process, the sunflower's head gently tilts toward the east side of the stem, aligning itself with the direction of sunrise.
As the Sun moves across the sky, the flower head gradually adjusts toward the west. Research has revealed the presence of an internal circadian clock in sunflowers, which anticipates dawn and coordinates the opening of flowers with the morning arrival of pollinators.
To better understand how sunflowers perform this remarkable solar tracking, scientists conducted a experiment in which they cultivated two groups of flowers: one in a laboratory environment and the other outdoors, under light solar.
During research, the team analyzed gene activation by exposing both sets of plants to their respective light sources.
Sunflowers grown indoors grow toward the laboratory's blue light source, which activates genes associated with phototropin.
In contrast, flowers grown outdoors, which moved their heads, displayed a distinct pattern of gene expression. Interestingly, these sunflowers demonstrated no notable differences in phototropin molecules between the east and west sides of the stem.
The study results indicate that there are distinct pathways that span different wavelengths of light, allowing sunflowers to achieve the goal of following the sun.
Despite this, scientists have not yet identified the specific genes involved in heliotropism, pointing out that phototropin has been ruled out as the main culprit.
The understanding was reinforced by the fact that sunflowers grown in the laboratory sought to track the sun immediately after being exposed to the external environment.
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