Timing is everything – for plants too
Tuesday, August 18, 2015 - 05:00
in Biology & Nature
Organisms differ in their morphology between species, within species and even within individuals at different stages of development. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, studied how different leaf forms arise within a single plant species, hairy bittercress, and discovered that varying development rates play a key role in the process. The pacesetter for this coordination process is a gene that also determines flowering time. Depending on how active the gene is, leaf form changes because plants progress through their development at different speeds. The scientists propose this as a simple way for evolution to have created new leaf forms within a species.