Researchers at the Institute of Network Biology in Germany and their colleagues …. published a study in Nature showing that plants communicate with the environment in more complex ways than previously thought. The investigation revealed that the information-processing network, driven by hormones, in one genus of plants is carried out by more than 2,000 protein interactions, hundreds of which had not been discovered before.
โWeโre going to need a second green revolution,โ [to feed a growing population] says Shelley Lumba, a plant biologist at the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the study. โThese would be good leads to test.โ
…
New technologies, including CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, can make genetic modification relatively straightforward. Scientists hoping to tweak plant genes must first know what they are looking for, however. Focusing on systems rather than individual genes could prove useful. To activate their defenses against insects, for example, plants might have to shut down another hormone pathway, such as growth or water conservation.
โThere are a lot of trade-offs that are fundamental to plant physiology, and we know theyโre there, but theyโre not characterized in a quantitative way,โ [says Matthew Hudson, a crop scientist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign].
Share this article
…
Making plants more flexible might be more important than giving them specific traits. โHormones permit responses to take place,โ Lumba says. โTheyโre not instructing; theyโre allowing environmental stimulation to be read.โ
