How plants feel heat and grow taller because of it
Sageman-Furnas K, Strader LC
Plant Signaling
The way your tomato seedlings stretch and get leggy during a heat wave, or how spring bulbs push up faster after a warm spell, traces back to this exact molecular thermostat inside plant cells.
Plants don't have a nervous system, but they can still tell when it's getting warmer, and they respond by growing differently, often stretching upward and reshaping their leaves. This review pulls together research showing that a plant hormone called auxin acts as the go-between: heat changes the shape and behavior of proteins inside cells, which changes how auxin gets made, moved, and used, which then changes how the whole plant grows. It's a helpful roadmap for understanding why your garden looks different in a heat wave versus a cool spring.
Key Findings
Temperature directly alters the physical shape and binding behavior of key auxin signaling proteins, including TIR1/AFB receptors and Aux/IAA partners
Heat also affects how ARF proteins cluster together (oligomerize), which changes how strongly they turn on growth genes
Multiple temperature-sensing pathways converge on auxin biosynthesis, transport, and distribution to drive thermomorphogenic growth like stem elongation
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists reviewed how plants sense rising temperatures at the molecular level and translate that heat into growth changes, like stretching taller or reshaping leaves, through a hormone called auxin.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Nuclear auxin signaling and temperature: perception and response across scales.
Temperature shapes plant biology, affecting everything from molecular biophysics to whole-organism development. Because plant cellular temperature typically matches ambient conditions, cellular pro...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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