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How does a tree know when to wake up and grow?

Winter takes its toll on living things. To protect themselves from the elements, bears hibernate, and trees go dormant, but how does a tree know to wake up and grow again? Molecular geneticists from Michigan Technological University led a team that identified a gene that tells a poplar tree when winter ends and it's time to start growing again. The new study says it's a gene, just like a gene tells almost anything else alive when to wake up and grow. On a similar note, if you think of the ocean as a living entity, it too acts as if it were one living organism. You may wish to see the article, "Is the Earth a Sentient Living Organism? New Study May Provide the proof."

What tells trees to wake up from dormancy and grow?
Anne Hart, photography. Backyard fig tree.

Findings on the tree gene study, "EARLY BUD-BREAK 1 (EBB1) is a regulator of release from seasonal dormancy in poplar trees," are published online since June 20, 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Molecular geneticists have named the gene—fittingly—“Early Bud-Break 1,” since it helps awaken the plant cells responsible for growth from their winter sleep. Biologists have observed what happens when trees become dormant, but up to now, they haven’t understood the underlying genetic mechanisms that enable them to start growing again.



“The absence of EBB1 during dormancy allows the tree to progress through the physiological, developmental and adaptive changes leading to dormancy,” Busov explains, according to the June 16, 2014 news release, "How does a tree know it's time to grow again?" Busov continues, “while the expression of EBB1 in specific cell layers prior to bud-break enables reactivation of growth in the cells that develop into shoots and leaves and re-entry into the active growth phase of the tree.”

Timing of the new growth is important economically and environmentally




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