A protein shows plants the oxygen concentration of their surroundings
Sunday, October 23, 2011 - 14:30
in Biology & Nature
Plants need water to grow, but every hobby gardener knows that you shouldn’t carry this to excess either. During waterlogging or flooding, plants can’t take up enough oxygen that they urgently need for their cellular respiration and energy production. Plants respond to this state of hypoxia with the activation of certain genes that help them cope with the stress. Until now it was unclear how plants are sensing the oxygen concentration. Recent experiments show that under hypoxia a protein that can activate genes, a so-called transcription factor, is released from the cell membrane to accumulate in the nucleus and trigger the expression of stress response genes.