Special Feature 1 – The Wondrous Survival Strategies of Plants The circadian clock —— the ingenious mechanism enables plants to survive changing natural environments

Plants cannot uproot themselves to go and find the optimal environment for their survival. The circadian clock is a crucial survival strategy enabling plants to stay alive while they respond appropriately to a changing environment. Each cell has a clock gene, and these genes are thought to be synchronized somehow. How is the circadian clock involved in the physiological phenomena of plants? And given that plants do not have a central organ equivalent to the mammalian brain, how do they synchronize their multiple clocks?