Researchers have identified a second gene related to how plants sense and regulate temperature—a discovery that could help us understand how to make crops more resilient in the face of climate change.
The news: Researchers at UC Riverside identified a gene, Regulator of Chloroplast Biogenesis (RCB), a “novel temperature signaling component that functions collaboratively with HMR [Hemera]” to sense temperature changes, says the study published in Nature Communications.
“The sensation of temperature changes is essential for the survival of plants,” because “a shift in ambient growth temperature of only a few degrees can significantly alter the expression of hundreds of temperature-responsive genes, resulting in dramatic adaptive responses in plant development, growth, metabolism, and immunity,” the researchers explain.
“Because increases in global temperature are expected to drastically reduce crop productivity, understanding the mechanism of temperature signaling has become imminent to create a knowledge base for devising strategies to sustain crop production in a changing climate,” they continue.
What can we do with this knowledge? The “next steps in the lab will be to identify these two genes’ interconnected roles in growth, flowering, and other stages of plant development,” explains Agri-Pulse—and perhaps using gene editing to breed more resilient plants.
But we need to ensure policy allows discoveries like this one to be used practically beyond the lab—read more about what we can do to modernize plant biotech regulations.
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