How plants survive the night

Wednesday 24 February 2010, 12.15PM

Speaker: Professor Alison Smith OBE, John Innes Centre, Norwich

Plants have the unique ability to make their own food directly from carbon dioxide in the air. The process of photosynthesis in leaves converts carbon dioxide into sugars, which plants use for their growth.  But photosynthesis requires light, and plants live only half of their lives in the light. How do they ensure that they don’t starve during the night? Professor Smith will talk about the remarkable processes in the leaf that ensure a constant supply of sugars for growth in darkness. The leaf manufactures solid, crystalline starch granules from sugars during the day, then releases sugars from these granules at night. To prevent starvation, the release of sugars must continue throughout the night, until dawn when photosynthesis can resume. The plant achieves this by using an internal 24-h clock to measure time. Whenever it gets dark, the plant can “anticipate” accurately when the next dawn will come and adjust the release of sugars so the supply lasts until that point.

About the speaker: Professor Smith is Head of the Metabolic Biology Department at the John Innes Centre. Her expertise is in primary metabolism in plants, particularly the interconversion of sucrose and starch.  The aim of her research is to discover what determines the amount and structure of starch in plant storage organs.

This talk is the second in this term's York Biology lecture series:

• Genetic fingerprinting and beyond
• A talk by Professor Armand M Leroi, author of Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body

Location: Room P/X001, Physics

Admission: Admission is free and open to all

Email: publiclectures@york.ac.uk

Telephone: 01904 432622