The beautiful colors and smells of flowers serve a much greater purpose than just decoration. Flowers contain the plant’s reproductive organs, and those same colors and smells that make a room beautiful also attract bees and other animals for pollination. Floral stem cells are crucial for the growth of the flower and its organs. That growth must eventually terminate for the flower to fully develop and set seeds. A new study led by scientists at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) and seen in The Plant Cell shows that the transcription factor KNUCKLES is a key regulator of this stem cell arrest by initiating a serious of epigenetic events to repress the stem cell determinant WUSCHEL.
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Source: Phys.org