Circumnutation and Growth of Inflorescence Stems of Arabidopsis thaliana in Response to Microgravity under Different Photoperiod Conditions
1
CAS Center for Excellence in Molecular Plant Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China
2
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Life 2020, 10(3), 26; https://doi.org/10.3390/life10030026
Received: 15 January 2020 / Revised: 6 March 2020 / Accepted: 7 March 2020 / Published: 18 March 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space Experiments for Astrobiology)
Circumnutation is a periodic growth movement, which is an important physiological mechanism of plants to adapt to their growth environments. Gravity and photoperiod are two key environmental factors in regulating the circumnutation of plants, but the coordination mechanism between them is still unknown. In this study, the circumnutation of Arabidopsis thaliana inflorescence stems was investigated on board the Chinese recoverable satellite SJ-10 and the Chinese spacelab TG-2. Plants were cultivated in a special plant culture chamber under two photoperiod conditions [a long-day (LD) light: dark cycle of 16:8 h, and a short-day (SD) light: dark cycle of 8:16 h]. The plant growth and movements were followed by two charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras. The parameter revealed a daily (24 h) modulation on both TG-2 and SJ-10, under both the LD and the SD conditions. The inhibition of circumnutation was more apparent by microgravity under the SD in comparison with that under the LD condition, suggesting the synergistic effects of the combined microgravity and photoperiod on the circumnutation in space. In addition, an infradian rhythm (ca. 21 days long) on the TG-2 was also observed.
View Full-Text
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Wu, Y.; Xie, J.; Wang, L.; Zheng, H. Circumnutation and Growth of Inflorescence Stems of Arabidopsis thaliana in Response to Microgravity under Different Photoperiod Conditions. Life 2020, 10, 26.
Show more citation formats
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Search more from Scilit
