How do plants use growth to measure temperature?

Plants have to interpret temperature fluctuations over timescales ranging from hours to months to align their growth and development with the seasons. Recent research has shown that slow growth is used as a signal to sense long-term changes in temperature.

A protein called NTL8 is important for remembering the cold. If the weather gets warmer, the plants grow quicker and as cells multiply, the amount of a protein NTL8 becomes diluted. In contrast, in cooler temperatures plants grow more slowly and NTL8 is more concentrated, being able to accumulate over time. The mathematical model can reproduce the observations of NTL8 protein levels seen in the warm and cold.

Read more here ➡️https://www.jic.ac.uk/news/slow-growt...

Read the paper here 📰 https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158...