Artificial nighttime lighting (ANL) is known to adversely affect animals, but little is known what the consequences are to plants. Two genotypes of Populus balsamifera, a common urban tree, were used to investigate how ANL impacts plants. While the two genotypes varied in their physiological sensitivity to ANL, poorer levels of net leaf carbon assimilation compared to control samples suggested that ANL perturbed the perception of time of day for these plants. Gene set analysis on a subset of PopGenExpress microarray samples identified time of day specific processes in P. balsamifera, and a set of candidate ANL-sensitive genes were identified from these. Transcript measurements from the two genotypes revealed that ANL affects plants at the molecular level, for the diel cycling of the putative ANL-sensitive genes was perturbed. Together, these results suggest that ANL affects plants at the physiological and molecular level by perturbing their perception of time of day.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/33533 |
| Date | 27 November 2012 |
| Creators | Skaf, Joseph |
| Contributors | Campbell, Malcolm M. |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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