Thigmomorphogenesis (from
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...
θιγγάνω (thingánō) to touch, μορφή (''morphê'') shape, and γένεσις (génesis) creation) is the response by plants to mechanical sensation (touch) by altering their
growth patterns. In the wild, these patterns can be evinced by wind, raindrops, and rubbing by passing animals.
Botanists
This is a list of botanists who have Wikipedia articles, in alphabetical order by surname. The List of botanists by author abbreviation is mostly a list of plant taxonomists because an author receives a standard abbreviation only when that auth ...
have long known that plants grown in a greenhouse tend to be taller and more spindly than plants grown outside. M.J. Jaffe discovered in the 1970s that regular rubbing or bending of stems inhibits their elongation and stimulates their radial expansion, resulting in shorter, stockier plants.
Growth responses are caused by
changes in gene expression. This is likely related to the calcium-binding protein
calmodulin, suggesting Ca
2+ involvement in mediating growth responses.
Thigmomorphogenesis has also been determined to be a form of
phenotypic plasticity
Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompa ...
in plants, potentially inducing different adaptive and stress responses in a variety of species.
References
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External links
Video footage of some examples of thigmomorphogenesis
Plant physiology