Scientific Discovery: Sunflowers Track The Sun Using Internal Body Clock

Scientific Discovery: Sunflowers Track The Sun Using Internal Body Clock

Sunflowers are known to track the sun as it rises each day and sets at the evening. It was earlier assumed that light rays from the sun may be the trigger for the mechanism that causes this movement in the sunflower plant.

Scientists Hagop Atamian and Stacy Hamer of University of California have just proved this theory wrong. The duo have conducted research which indicated that sunflowers respond not only to light but also to an internal biological clock as per the report published in scientific journal Nature.

The 2 researchers conducted experiments where sunflowers grown in fields were shifted to specially constructed chambers and these were fixed with overhead lights that were kept on. To the amazement of the researchers the sunflowers carried on as if the sun was rising and setting.

The faces of the flowers moved regardless of where they were. This was carried on for several days according to the report by Nature. This indicated that the flowers were responding to the direction of the light but they were also their own timekeeper.

Another discovery by Atamian was that sunflowers ben when on side of the stem grows at a more rapid pace than the other. For instance faster growth on the western side of the stem causes the plant to bend towards the east.

Scientists are now studying gene expression on each side of the plant to learn more about the internal clock of this flower that alters growth on one side and not the other. The same clock in the same organ is now having opposite effects on opposite sides of the stem according to the researcher who has been quoted by Nature.

Other plants that align themselves to the sun everyday include soybeans and cotton. These are important crops. Scientists have demonstrated that this type of tracking of the sun improves the productivity and yield of the plant.

Mature sunflowers stop tracking the sun and stand straight. However they also face east ready to soak up the sun when it rises. This research finding about sunflowers was also reported at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists in the US at Portland.

With so many new discoveries about plants and flowers such as the recent genetic blueprint of wheat or the discovery about sunflowers most plant biologists and agriculturists will be able to discover the secrets of nature.

With climate change upon us science has the capacity to discover the answer to the riddles of nature. It can create the perfect solutions and propose new theories and facts about previously only partially understood phenomenon.