Image: Jucember/Wikimedia Commons
With the global climate becoming less and less predictable, and California suffering from a seemingly endless drought, crops are destined to suffer. Scientists are focusing on building hardier plants—and a team in Oxford may have found the key, detailed in a study released yesterday.Plant gene SP1 controls the development of chloroplasts, which you probably remember from high school biology as the centers of photosynthesis. But during a period of environmental stress, the normal photosynthesis reaction can produce a byproduct that damages the plant's health.The Oxford team wanted to see if tweaking this gene could help reduce the production of these harmful byproducts, called reactive oxygen species. They engineered a plant (a species of cress) that overexpressed the SP1 gene, and compared its performance with both the naturally occurring cress plant and a mutant version that lacked the SP1 gene entirely.They then simulated several stress conditions in separate experiments: high salt concentration, drought, and herbicide application. The engineered SP1 overexpressor performed better than either of the other plants, suggesting that this particular gene may be responsible for increased resistance to stress."The overexpressors were indistinguishable from healthy, unstressed control plants," said the team's leader, professor Paul Jarvis. "The production of the toxic compounds was reduced to a background level—it was as if the plants were not experiencing stress at all, instead of struggling to survive like the others."The team is now broadening their scope to see if they can replicate their results as effectively in other plant species.