Scientists at the John Innes Centre have taken another crucial step towards understanding how plants initiate flowering.
A step closer to understanding the 'switch' that triggers flowering in plants July 28, 2016 The plants on the left contain the wild type FLC gene, so during a period of cold the protein VAL1 was able to identify the sequence, and bind to the FLC gene to initiate flowering. The plants on the right contain the mutation in the FLC … more Scientists at the John Innes Centre have taken another crucial step towards understanding how plants initiate flowering. This new development uncovers a previously unidentified step in the process of vernalisation, which links an important gene responsible for flowering time to the proteins that regulate it. This new finding could contribute towards the development of new varieties of crops adapted to produce the food we need in a changing climate. Decades of research have already gone into understanding the process of 'vernalisation', how plants sense periods of low temperature , and 'remember' this information...