Plants Use Math to Ration Food Use | The Institute for Creation Research

Plants Use Math to Ration Food Use

A new study came out showing how plants utilize an efficient form of mathematics to precisely calculate how much starch to consume as food during the night.1

During the daytime, plants make carbohydrates through photosynthesis and store a portion of them as starch molecules. The cells then metabolize that starch as a food source during the night to fuel cell growth and development. One researcher said, "If the starch store is used too fast, plants will starve and stop growing during the night. If the store is used too slowly, some of it will be wasted."2

However, the plant must use its food reserves judiciously and dynamically by controlling the rate of its metabolism along with the amount of starch used during the night. Researchers are now beginning to unravel how plants manage this process, and they were surprised to find that the mustard plant they studied followed principles of mathematical equations. Researcher Allison Smith said, "The capacity to perform arithmetic calculation is vital for plant growth and productivity."2

In the natural environment, plants have to partition out their starch reserves during the night so that they are consumed at a consistent rate and last throughout this dark period. This is done by dynamically feeding critical variable information into the cellular-control system such as day length (which changes during the year), the amount of starch available, temperature, and even water availability.

Researchers held constant most of the fluctuating factors that are typically found in nature. Nevertheless, they discovered that even under highly controlled conditions, the model mustard plants they were studying, called Arabidopsis thaliana, exhibited an amazing level of bioengineering and performed mathematical operations.

Researchers proposed that the process was controlled by two different sets of molecules. One set measured time, like an internal clock. The other set measured and monitored starch reserves. These two sets of molecules work together in a mathematically and dynamically coordinated fashion to control the rate of starch usage during the night when the plant is growing but not photosynthesizing.

Richard Buggs, a noted intelligent design proponent and plant scientist at Queen Mary, University of London, told the BBC, "This is not evidence for plant intelligence. It simply suggests that plants have a mechanism designed to automatically regulate how fast they burn carbohydrates at night. Plants don't do maths voluntarily and with a purpose in mind like we do."3

Indeed, these results clearly support incredible bioengineering design and biocomplexity in living systems that allows for dynamic coordinated responses of the organism and its physiology to the environment in which it lives. The credit for this amazing mechanism in plants should go to God, the supreme intelligence who designed it.

References

  1. Scialdone, A. et al. Arabidopsis plants perform arithmetic division to prevent starvation at night. Posted on elife.elifesciences.org June 25, 2013, accessed July 1, 2013.
  2. Briggs, H. 2013. Plants 'do maths' to control overnight food supplies. BBC News Science & Environment. Posted on bbc.co.uk June 23, 2013, accessed July 1, 2013.
  3. Briggs, H. 2013. Plants 'do maths' to control overnight food supplies. BBC News Science. Posted on customnewscast.com June 24, 2013, accessed on July 1, 2013.

* Dr. Tomkins is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from Clemson University.

Article posted on July 10, 2013.

The Latest
ACTS & FACTS
Pervasive Genome Functionality Destroys the Myth of Junk DNA
In 2001, the first rough draft of the human genome was published in a collaborative effort between private industry and the public sector.1,2...

NEWS
Happy Labor Day 2025
“For we are laborers together with God: ye are God’s husbandry, ye are God’s building.” (1 Corinthians 3:9) Labor Day was...

ACTS & FACTS
The Age of Reptiles Myth
We hear about the Age of Reptiles, also called the Age of Dinosaurs, almost as early as we can understand the idea. Even kindergarteners might be taught...

ACTS & FACTS
The Tiktaalik Missing Link Myth
In 2004, the paleontological community—and the world—was presented with what many evolutionists considered to be a dyedin- the-wool missing...

ACTS & FACTS
Archaeopteryx, Myth of a Transitional Fossil
In 1860, one year after the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, a wonderfully preserved fossil feather was discovered in...

ACTS & FACTS
Busting the Myth about Lucy
by Brian Thomas, Ph.D., and Chris Rupe, Ph.D.* Most folks consider our ape ancestry as established science, with Lucy as the main link. However,...

ACTS & FACTS
Evolutionary Vestigial Features: Worse Than Myth, a Scam
Due to teachers’ influence during the formative years of young people’s lives, they can be a powerful force in spreading evolution to new...

ACTS & FACTS
Blind Cavefish Unmask the Convergent Evolution Myth
Within the ever-expanding theory of evolution, there is a system of specialized language designed to identify each major interpretative concept. Some...

ACTS & FACTS
A Booming Generation
And the king answered them roughly; and king Rehoboam forsook the counsel of the old men, and answered them after the advice of the young men.…And...

ACTS & FACTS
Darwin's Galápagos Finches: The Myth of Natural Selection
A group of birds known as Darwin’s finches (genus Geospiza) lives in the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean 600 miles west of Ecuador....