Musoki’s latest work shows that, in the absence of light, humidity oscillation entrains the plant circadian clock in a strange and counter-intuitive manner. Importantly, he demonstrated that diurnal humidity and its appropriate phase relationship to light had large effects on growth, immunity, and fitness. This was a challenging project with lots of controls and clever experiments. It is hard to disentangle humidity and temperature from plant physiology. Give Musoki a “high five” when you see him! This was a fun collaboration with the Dong lab.
- Mwimba M, Karapeytan S, Liu L, Maruqes J, McGinnis EM, Buchler NE, Dong X. Daily humidity oscillation regulates the circadian clock to influence plant physiology. Nature Communications 9: 4290 (2018)