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Circadian Clocks to ascertain climate change accurately
Source: Science Daily, Date: , 2009
The ability of plants to tell the time, a mechanism common to all
living beings, enables them to survive, grow and reproduce. An
international team has studied this circadian clock from a molecular
viewpoint and has found an ecological implication: it makes climate
change scenarios and CO2 level figures more accurate. Plants take up CO2 by means of photosynthesis and can
potentially mitigate climate change. However, “in studies performed by
ecologists to ascertain the level of CO2 in the models, circadian regulation was not taken into account,” the researcher underlines.
Now a team of scientists suggests this regulation should be included
in climate models based on the study of plant life in order to obtain
better and more accurate results. “A normal climate change model would
forecast photosynthesis to be uniform between 6am and 10am in a
tropical forest if environmental conditions (light, humidity,
temperature, etc) are constant. However, as plants have a circadian
clock, photosynthesis is seen to increase during that time of the day”,
the ecologist states. According to the scientists, the circadian clock may well be the key
for plants to survive a rise in temperatures. Plants without optimised
circadian regulation will have “more difficulty to adjust to climate
changes and survive the stress”.
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