Scientists Discover How to Turn Plant’s Leaves Into Petals

In the botanical equivalent of turning iron into gold, two scientific teams have discovered how to convert a plant’s leaves into petals. The finding contributes to understanding the complex genetic workings that lead to the creation of flowers and raises the possibility of interesting new plant forms, including roses that might bloom all along their stems.

Scientists have known for a decade how to convert petals and other flower parts back into leaves but have not been able to turn leaves into petals until now. The findings are reported by UC San Diego’s Martin Yanofsky in this month’s issue of the journal Current Biology and by Takashi Honma of Kyoto University in Japan in a recent issue of the journal Nature.

The new finding shows that two genes in a class of genes recently discovered by Yanofsky are needed to convert the leaves into petals. In both cases, the findings were made in the weed Arabidopsis, a plant widely used by biologists because its genetics are so well described.