SUN-SMART PLANTS
As the sun tracks daily through the sky from east to west, different parts of the canopy are exposed to high light. Rossel et al. (pages 4091–4110) investigated the extent to which leaves exposed to full sunlight could signal to distal shaded leaves that it's a sunny day. The authors demonstrate that a systemic signal is rapidly transmitted within 15 minutes, resulting in similar global transcriptional and acclimatory responses in both exposed and shaded leaves of Arabidopsis to protect against impending and potentially damaging excess light.