Latest Phototropism Stories

Technische Universität München Plants have developed a number of strategies to capture the maximum amount of sunlight through their leaves. As we know from looking at plants on a windowsill, they grow toward the sunlight to be able to generate energy by photosynthesis. Now an international team of scientists has provided definitive insights into the driving force behind this movement – the plant hormone auxin. The growth of plants toward light is particularly important at the...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online An experiment reported in the journal BMC Plant Biology studied the effects of growing plants without gravity, helping to disprove one theory about how gravity kick-started plant behaviors on Earth. Astronauts growing Arabidopsis plants on the International Space Station tried to determine what plant growth patterns could be influenced by gravity. Plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviors called "waving" and "skewing,"...