Light Signaling in Plants
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Physiology and Metabolism".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2020) | Viewed by 13471
Special Issue Editor
Interests: plant dormancy; diurnal programming; secondary growth development; abiotic stress
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The development of almost every living organism is, to some extent, regulated by light. When discussing light regulation of biological systems, one is referring to the Sun that has long been positioned in the center of our solar system. This means that all life forms evolved around its presence. As soon as our planet developed an atmosphere providing a shield against most of the detrimental solar UV rays, life invaded land, and in the presence of water, it thrived. Especially for plants, light (solar radiation) is the source of energy that controls a high number of developmental aspects of its growth—a process called photomorphogenesis. Once hypocotyls reach the soil’s surface, their elongation deaccelerates, and the photosynthetic apparatus is established for autotrophic growth due to the presence of light. Plants can sense light intensity, quality, direction, and duration through photoreceptors that accurately detect alterations in the spectral composition (UV-B to Far Red), and are located throughout the plant.
The best-known mechanism promoted by light on plants is photosynthesis, which converts light energy into carbohydrates. Plants also use light to signal the beginning and end of key developmental processes such as the transitions to flowering and dormancy. These two processes are particularly important for the plant’s yield, since the transition to flowering reduces the duration of the vegetative stage and for plants growing in temperate or boreal climates, dormancy leads to a complete growth arrest. Understanding how light affects these processes enables plant breeders to produce crops that are able to retard the transition to flowering and avoid dormancy, thus increasing the yield of the plant.
Dr. Rita Teresa Pereira Teixeira
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- plant photoreceptors
- light sensing
- circadian clock plants
- photomorphogenesis
- photosynthesis
- abiotic stress
- vegetative growth
- floral transition
- dormancy
