Death Valley Shrub Rearranges Its Insides To Thrive In One Of The Hottest Places On Earth
Scientists have finally discovered how a weird desert plant can thrive in one of the hottest places on Earth. Turns out, the plucky plant rearranges its insides when the temperature goes up.
California’s Death Valley frequently experiences extreme conditions. Summertemperatures often soar above 120 degrees Fahrenheit(49 degrees Celsius) in the shade. Most plants wither in the face of such heat, but one plant,Tidestromia oblongifoliathrives.
Now, researchers have found that these gray-green flowering shrubs grow smaller leaves and rearrange their insides to flourish in super-hot conditions. They also found that the shrub has the best photosynthetic heat tolerance — the ability to photosynthesize at high temperatures of any known plant.
The researchwas published Nov. 17 in the journal Current Biology.
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Climate change isdriving up global temperatures and increasing the frequency of heat waves. The heat isalready reducing crop yieldsfor staple foods like wheat and maize, and scientists and officials areworried about what this means for food securityas temperatures continue to rise.
Heat-loving plants, such asT. oblongifoliacould hold the secrets to help other plants survive the heat and keep food on people’s plates. “Understanding their adaptations could help researchers design crops, environments, and management strategies to improve growth under increasingly frequent and prolonged high temperatures,” study co-authorSeung Rheea plant biologist and director of the Michigan State University’s Plant Resilience Institute, told Live Science.
Scientists have known for decades that there is something special aboutT. oblongifolia. At higher temperatures, most other plants’ rate ofphotosynthesisdeclines. But in 1972, researchers showed thatT. oblongifolia‘sphotosynthesis peaked at 117 F (47 °C).To find out how the hardy survivor can continue to photosynthesize and flourish while other plants wither, the researchers behind the new study collected seeds from Death Valley and grew the plants in growth containers. When the plants were eight weeks old, the scientists subjected them to Death Valley conditions for a month. They then observed the plants’ responses, such as how much carbon dioxide they absorbed.
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Within two days,T. oblongifoliahad intensified its rate of photosynthesis. After 10 days, it had tripled its biomass in a profusion of leaves that were smaller than the ones it produces at lower temperatures.
But the really surprising change happened within the plant. The scientists found that it developedmitochondriawhich are the powerhouses — or batteries — within the cell. These mitochondria were also mobile and able to move closer to the sites ofphotosynthesiswhich takes place inside special organelles called chloroplasts.
“This plant is moving the mitochondria around, reducing their volume, but increasing the density so that there are concentrated energy centres around the chloroplasts,”Andy Leigha plant ecologist at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia who specializes in heat-loving plants and was not involved in the research, told Live Science.
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In response to the brutal Death Valley temperatures, the plant’s chloroplasts also changed from ovals into a cup-like shape — something that had been previously seen in algae but not in plants that have many chloroplasts in the same cell. The researchers are not sure how the cup shape promotes photosynthesis and survival.
T. oblongifoliaalso rewires itstranscriptomewhich is a script of all the RNA messages that the cell produces at a given time and indicates which genes are being used or expressed. Some of the active genes focused on heat response and the plant’s repair system.
Rhee said the team’s next step would be to identify and characterize candidate genes to further narrow down how the plant survives. These could then enable researchers to find new ways to help other plants survive rising temperatures.
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“The mechanisms that lead to temperature sensitivity are well known, but strategies to overcome these inefficiencies are still being developed,”Carl Bernacchia crop researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. The new insights provide “a roadmap for potentially overcoming these challenges,” he said.
T. oblongifolia‘s strategies to survive and flourish at high temperatures could “help increase crop resilience not only for the future, but also for parts of the world that are presently food insecure,” he added.
Leigh was excited by the new research.T.
oblongifolia“could physically reconfigure its photosynthetic machinery when the chips were down, and to maintain photosynthetic function when it was stressful. That’s really cool,” she said.
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Leigh, who studies heat-loving plants in Australia’s scorching deserts, said there is a lot scientists still don’t know about organisms that survive in extreme environments.
“This particular species looks like a weed — a really freaky thing that you could just overlook,” she said. “There are really weird plants out there doing weird stuff that could be the key to improving our crops.”
Disclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification. We do not take any responsibility for its content, which remains solely the responsibility of the original publisher.
Disclaimer: This news article has been republished exactly as it appeared on its original source, without any modification.
We do not take any responsibility for its content, which remains solely the responsibility of the original publisher.
Author: uaetodaynews
Published on: 2025-11-21 03:02:00
Source: uaetodaynews.com
