clhs sciblog

At Brown University, scientists created a model that charts the genetic and environmental signals that show the life cycle of Arabidopsis thaliana, a weed closely related to canola and cabbage. They planted the weed in 5 cities all over Europe and carefully studied it from the time of it’s planting to when it started to flower. They wanted to study how the plants life cycle different depending on genotype, season and climate. They spanned their experiments from summer 2006 to fall 2008, planting the weed in many different growing seasons. The scientists then went back to their lab and made models of the rates of development of each genotype for each plant site. With their model, these scientists can successfully predict how the flowering of plants will behave under a range of environmental conditions. Read the entire article here.

I think this is a great discovery in the biological world. With their model, they can help predict how all sorts of crops will act under future conditions. The scientists working on this project also said that they would be able to tweak the model a little to see how many other crops will respond to changing climates. This would greatly not just ecologically important plants, but everyday crops that we use.