Barcelona ( Spain), 9 mar ( EFE).- Researchers Spanish have discovered a new mechanism of regulation of the biological clock in plants or circadian clock through an essential protein known with the name of TOC1, which regulates the rhythms internally in the vegetable.
Reported today the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas (CSIC), the work, published in Science, changes the operating model attached to the biological clock of plants existing during the last ten years.
The Center for research in Agrigenómica (CRAG) is a consortium of the CSIC, Institute of research and food technology (IRTA) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).
Plants present a biological rhythm with a period of 24 hours, which is synchronized with changes in light and environmental occurring during the day and night.
In response to these changes, a series of proteins Act by regulating essential processes in the plant, such as germination, growth, flowering, or responses to environmental stress conditions.
Until now, it was believed that the functioning of the circadian clock of a plant depended essentially on two oscillators (a set of genes), one day and another night.
According to this model, the protein TOC1 activated genes in the daytime oscillator, which in turn was repressing the night oscillator.
Now, the work led by the researcher at the CSIC Paloma more reveals a different model in which TOC1 directly connects the two oscillators through the direct regulation of the expression of these genes.
In addition, the researchers show that the role of TOC1 in the circadian clock is not the activate the expression of genes, as was believed until now, but to repress them.
, TOC1 protein would function as a global repressor of gene expression of the oscillator operating both during the day and at night.
The implications of the work are relevant, since it defines a new structure of the circadian clock and decrypts new mechanisms of functioning and regulation that are essential in the life cycle of the plant.
In addition, brand new research strategies, therefore, according to Mas, “the study of the role of the clock in the control of Physiology and metabolism of the plant must now take into account the new structure of the oscillator, in which TOC1 acts as global repressor and not as Activator”.
At work involving researchers from the CRAG of the Institute California of Technology (USA), of the School of Biological Sciences of the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom) and the Centre for Systems Biology, also of Edinburgh. EFE.
