Plants Use a Molecular Clock to Predict When They'll Be Infected
Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - 10:20
in Biology & Nature
Plants are able to predict when infections are more likely to occur and regulate their immune response accordingly, new research has found. Led by the University of Warwick, the researchers discovered that a plants' molecular clock is connected to their immune system to increase levels of resistance to infection at dawn - the time at which fungal infections appear most likely to occur, with plants unable to maintain the highest level of resistance at all times of day.