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Biotech Science

Biological Clock Found in Plants 32

Posted by timothy from the time-to-grow-more-veggies-for-humans dept.
Joe the Lesser writes "This CNN article discusses how scientists have found that a chemical 'clock' that tells a plant to prepare for the sun. The clock controls an enzyme that modifies a protein called D1. This protein is critical for photosynthesis, the process whereby plants extract light and convert it to food. When D1 binds with phosphorus, it creates a modified protein found in chloroplast -- a special structure in the cell that's made of carbohydrates, fat and proteins."
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Biological Clock Found in Plants More

Biological Clock Found in Plants

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  • I have something like that, it makes strange growling noises need my belly buttons right around lunch time.

  • Old news (Score:3, Funny)

    by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @03:00PM (#5654463) Homepage Journal
    Of course plants have a biological clock. That's why I switched to boxers.

    ---
    J. Green Giant

    • Re:Old news (Score:5, Funny)

      by MisterFancypants ( 615129 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @08:15PM (#5657132)
      Of course plants have a biological clock. That's why I switched to boxers.

      It's almost like that's a joke, except it isn't funny and it doesn't even make any sense.

      • Re:Old news (Score:3, Interesting)

        by js7a ( 579872 )
        It's almost like that's a joke, except it isn't funny and it doesn't even make any sense.

        I agree, completely. However, for some reason it made me laugh.

        I think my sense of humor is bored and experimenting with surrealism.

      • ...it doesn't even make any sense.

        Convoluted it is, and all hope of humor is gone if it needs explaining, but for those scratching their heads:

        He signs his post, "J. Green Giant". Jolly Green Giant. Big green guy from frozen vegetable commericials. Could perhaps be a giant humanoid plant.

        Boxers. Men trying to have kids often switch from briefs to boxers (and sometimes take more radical steps) to keep the testicles a little cooler and thus produce more sperm.

        So, the plant-man Jolly Green Giant is c

        • So, the plant-man Jolly Green Giant is conscious that his "biological clock" is ticking

          Though supposedly scientists now think men have biological clocks too [abc.net.au]...it's women who are 'famous' for have 'ticking' gotta-have-kids clocks. In both sexes, it's designed to get you to reproduce while you're healthy, but women face a rather finite deadline [plannedparenthood.org]...with guys, it's not quite as....uh...firm...

          Of course, you all seem to have forgotten that the Jolly Green Giant HAS a kid already- 'Sprout'. further proof you

      • >>It's almost like that's a joke, except it isn't funny and it doesn't even make any sense.

        Jeopardy Answer: Who is CarrotTop?

  • Next thing you know (Score:3, Funny)

    by leviramsey ( 248057 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @03:23PM (#5654675) Journal

    The lady plants'll start really going on the prowl at about 33 or so...

  • Odd Article (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JAZ ( 13084 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @03:31PM (#5654750)
    Why is it that an article discovery about this 'clock' system in plants seems to be more a description of photosynthesis (which is fairly well understood, if I remember my highschool biology correctly) than the newly discovered clock?

    Maybe they just don't know how the clock works yet, but it would be nice to have more information about the nature of the clock than a explaination of photosynthesis. I know that that photosynthesis is worked in because the clock has an effect on it, but is that really the real story? It isn't IMHO.

  • Life (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kamukwam ( 652361 )
    I wonder if this has anything to do with how old a plant will become. Maybe if they can control its biological clock, they can extend the days of that plant.
    • It's not quite the same type of 'biological clock'; this refers to a daily rhythm rather than a life cycle effect. Animals have an innate sense of light and dark cycles which has been well studied, yet not thoroughly understood. By changing the length of light versus dark exposure (ie. 13 hours light to 11 dark versus 12 hours light to 12 hours dark) one may observe changes in the animal behaviour. Through conditioning, I believe you can entirely flip-flop an animal's day (ie. our morning would be their

    • Plant ageing clock (Score:4, Informative)

      by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Friday April 04, 2003 @05:19AM (#5659449)
      The plant ageing clock is the same as the human ageing clock; it's based on something called "the Hayflick limit", which is the limit on the number of times a cell can divide.

      You can look it up on the web, but the short version is that each time a cell divides, it shortens the telomeres on the ends of its genes; when it runs out of telomeres, the cell dies (or becomes cancerous, or is subject to other age-related disease processes).

      Baby humans and plants don't have this limit, since, in gametogenesis, the telomeres are lengthened by a chemical called "telomerase", effectively resetting the clock for the newly created entity.

      -- Terry
  • ...they could find a way to get this to apply to humans. Like a nightly pill. If it's naturally made by plants, it could be cheaper than sythetic and it could make the alarm clock obsolete.
  • We learned about auxins and tropisms in Biology class. Isn't this just one of those?

  • link to paper + abstract (Score:4, Informative)

    by mlush ( 620447 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @05:43PM (#5655931)

    link2paper [plantphysiol.org]

    Phosphorylation of the D1 Photosystem II Reaction Center Protein Is Controlled by an Endogenous Circadian Rhythm

    Isabelle S. Booij-James, W. Mark Swegle, Marvin Edelman, and Autar K. Mattoo*

    Vegetable Laboratory, The Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center-West, United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville, Maryland 20705-2350 (I.S.B.-J., M.S., A.K.M.); and Department of Plant Sciences, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel (M.E.)

    The light dependence of D1 phosphorylation is unique to higher plants, being constitutive in cyanobacteria and algae. In a photoautotrophic higher plant, Spirodela oligorrhiza, grown in greenhouse conditions under natural diurnal cycles of solar irradiation, the ratio of phosphorylated versus total D1 protein (D1-P index: [D1-P]/[D1] + [D1-P]) of photosystem II is shown to undergo reproducible diurnal oscillation. These oscillations were clearly out of phase with the period of maximum in light intensity. The timing of the D1-P index maximum was not affected by changes in temperature, the amount of D1 kinase activity present in the thylakoid membranes, the rate of D1 protein synthesis, or photoinhibition. However, when the dark period in a normal diurnal cycle was cut short artificially by transferring plants to continuous light conditions, the D1-P index timing shifted and reached a maximum within 4 to 5 h of light illumination. The resultant diurnal oscillation persisted for at least two cycles in continuous light, suggesting that the rhythm is endogenous (circadian) and is entrained by an external signal.

  • Biological Clock Found In Pants. (Score:3, Funny)

    by WayneGayle ( 107802 ) on Thursday April 03, 2003 @05:50PM (#5656008)
    ...is how I read this headline.

  • That's why (Score:2, Funny)

    by Jru Hym ( 609379 )
    a certain plant gets very nervous at 4:20

  • hmm... (Score:2)

    by C21 ( 643569 )
    One possible use maybe is for indoor growing. Knowing this "clock" we can better regulate the on/off cycles to maximize efficiency of artificial life, sprinklers, and topical fertilizer.
  • because if you think about it, plants do all sorts of things at certain times of the day and season. trees lose their leaves in autumn, i'm sure there's more to that than just the weather changing, because i know that even if the weather changes early, trees don't lose their leaves earlier, they just don't get the pretty foliage that people like to see. also, during the course of the day, certain flowers will open and close depending on sunlight. i've seen flowers open when it's not particularly sunny.

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