The way the flowers know it is time to hatch

Researchers have discovered exactly where a major protein forms before it activates flowering in plants.

To date, no one has identified which cells produce small proteins, called T-blooming blooms (FT).

The study also showed an extensive inter-cell signaling system that regulates FT production.

Qingguo Chen, the first author of the study, a research associate in the laboratory of Robert Turgeon, lead author of the article and professor of plant biology at Cornell University said: 'Understand the position of the FT and how to coordinate with other flowering factors is very important for breeders, which is very useful for breeders when adjusting flowering time '.

Flowering of many plants begins with awareness of the length of the day, occurring in leaves. Some flowers bloom in short days and others bloom when days are long.

Flowering of many plants begins with awareness of the length of the day, occurring in leaves.

It was previously known that for the Arabidopsis family, long days will help them start a process where fusion and FT leaves in vascular tissue of plants, called phloem , bring sugar and nutrients from leaves. to the rest of the tree.

FT goes to the top of the branches, the highest point of the leaves and the new stem, where it encourages the formation of flowers.

The regulation of flowering is very complicated, with the advent of FT controlled by more than 30 proteins in the interaction layers.

Turgeon said: 'There is a complex network and you cannot clarify it until you realize what is happening to these particular cells, so geography is very important.'

Because leaf veins are very small and covered with green chlorophyll-rich photosynthetic cells, identifying FT-producing cells is difficult.

In this study, Turgeon and colleagues used fluorescent proteins to identify cells in veins where FT was created.

Researchers have found that FT is also produced in the same type of cell companion in Maryland Mammoth tobacco leaf.

Moreover, when they killed companion cells, it delayed flowering in both Arabidopisis and tobacco.

When they took a closer look at the paths leading to flowering, they found that killing these companion cells stopped the downstream process of the FT, but not upstream, thus confirming that the FT derived from these upstream cells and the FT synthesis is regulated by a streptococcus cell signaling system.

These findings were studied by the National Academy of Sciences.