Philip Wigge - How do plants sense temperature?

November 2019

  • Date: Nov 13, 2019
  • Time: 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Philip Wigge
  • PLANT ADAPTATION, UNIVERSITY OF POTSDAM & LEIBNIZ IGZ, GROßBEEREN
  • Location: Central Building
  • Room: Lecture Hall
  • Host: Arun Sampathkumar

Temperature is molecular motion, and plants are subject to significant changes in temperature over a range of timescales from minutes to seasons. As well as being a major potential stress and determinant of the distribution of plants globally, temperature also provides valuable seasonal and circadian information that plants can exploit to adapt to their environment. Temperature sensing could arise as an emergent property from the cumulative behaviour of thousands of metabolic reactions in the cell, or alternatively, specific molecules (thermosensors) may have acquired specific temperature sensing behaviours. I will discuss these two hypotheses, and present unpublished work showing a new role for liquid phase transitions in temperature perception pathways.

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