Posted By Matt Shipman—NC State
Futurity
“Essentially, we found that warmer nights throw the rice plant’s internal clock out of whack,” says Colleen Doherty, an associate professor of biochemistry at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of a paper on the work in the journal PNAS.
“Most people think plants aren’t dynamic, but they are. Plants are constantly regulating their biological processes—gearing up for photosynthesis just before dawn, winding that down in the late afternoon, determining precisely how and where to burn their energy resources. Plants are busy, it’s just difficult to observe all that activity from the outside.”
And what researchers have learned is that the clock responsible for regulating all of that activity gets messed up when the nights get hotter relative to the days.