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Significance Plants use the Earth’s gravitational field to orient their growth, but there are large gaps in our understanding of the mechanism. We measured thousands of corn seedling roots, changing… Click to show full abstract
Significance Plants use the Earth’s gravitational field to orient their growth, but there are large gaps in our understanding of the mechanism. We measured thousands of corn seedling roots, changing their growth direction in response to gravity (gravitropism) with machine vision methods, and we used genetic information about the seedlings to coarsely map the genomic positions of influential genes. Because we had previously performed the same experiment with the distantly related Arabidopsis plant, we could use a gene-relatedness search to pinpoint only those genes residing within the relevant regions of the genome in both species. Follow-up tests verified the identity of four genes that modify root gravitropism. The new information could help us understand how gravity shapes root system architectures.
Journal Title: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Year Published: 2022
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