When grown close together, plants fight one another to have the most sun. To be able to do that, they have developed a system of reactions called “shade-avoiding syndrome.” It is a phenomenon easily observed and identifiable.

To enhance our understanding of this phenomenon, researchers at the Protein crystalography and crystalogenesis laboratory at the Institute of Structural Biology (IBS, CEA-CNRS-Université Joseph Fourier de Grenoble) and American, Swedish, and Argentine teams have identified, in Arabidopsis, several genes involved in the “shade-avoiding syndrome.” They have shown that these mutations translate into a different response when the plans are grown in shade.

Learn more by reading the CEA press release (in French).