Ottoline Leyser on how plants decide what to do

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2017

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

To the untrained eye, a plant's existence may seem rather uneventful. It spends its days rooted to the spot, seemingly at the mercy of its environment. Not so, plant biologist Ottoline Leyser explains to Jim Al-Khalili. Plants are intelligent creatures that possess a unique ability to adapt in ways we animals can only dream of. They can alter their entire body plan of roots and shoots, when required, in response to their surroundings. Now Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory & Professor of Plant Development at Cambridge University, Ottoline has spent her career unearthing the mysterious mechanisms that underpin this process. She's pieced together the finely-tuned network of hormonal signals which regulate how the roots and shoots of a plant develop. These new insights into what plants get up to are so remarkable that Ottoline is determined to change the way we think about them. Producer: Beth Eastwood.

Transcript

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0:35.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
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0:41.0	I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and
0:46.0	important scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:51.6	To the untrained eye, a plant's existence may seem rather
0:54.6	uneventful. It spends its days rooted to the spot seemingly at the mercy of its
0:59.8	environment. Think again says plant biologist Ott Otterine Lyser.
1:03.8	Plants are intelligent creatures that possess a unique ability to adapt in ways we animals can only dream of,
1:10.5	altering their entire body plan of roots and shoots in response to their surroundings. of Cambridge University, Otterine has spent her career unearthing the mysterious mechanisms
1:24.8	that underpin this process to reveal a finely tuned network of hormonal signals which regulate
1:31.1	how a plant develops.
	...

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