PubMed · 2026-05-25
Plants produce hundreds of airborne scent compounds that serve as chemical signals, attracting pollinators, warning neighbors of herbivore attack, and coordinating stress responses. This review maps the full hierarchy of genetic controls governing when and how much of these compounds plants make, from individual gene switches to chromosome-level organization, with rose floral scent as the central case study.
VOC biosynthesis is governed by at least three distinct regulatory tiers: transcription factors and promoter architecture, post-transcriptional processing, and epigenetic modifications including chromatin organization.
Three-dimensional genome structure influences scent gene expression through long-range enhancer interactions, a mechanism rarely discussed in the plant volatile literature before this synthesis.
Rose floral scent production is used as a case study demonstrating how multiple regulatory layers converge to fine-tune a single metabolic output in response to developmental and environmental cues.
