[Nebullis]

Just in for a second, A-G. A lot of this research has been done in plants. Geotropism, circumnutation, etc. You may want to search the web with those ideas. I'll check for you later.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the leads! I'll be researching them tonight!

[Alamo-Girl]

I've found some interesting things in researching geotropism. For Lurkers interested in the subject of when or how gravity is 'sensed' rather than ‘learned’ (conversely, motion sickness or motion maladaptation syndrome):

Transcription Profiling of Early Gravitropic Response in Arabidopsis

This experiment identified transcripts present or absent under gravitropic stimulation. That many of them were also present under mechanical perturbation was unexpected.

The effect of microgravity environment on the expression of expansins from the peg and root tissue of Cucumis Sativus

This space biology experiment had the unexpected result of precious little difference between peg growth at space gravity v. ground.

I also found and then promptly lost (must be the excitement of the elections tonight) - a list of proposed space biology experiments to explore gravity vis a vis genetics.

On first blush, it appears that although it has been known for 100 years that roots know "down" and leaves know "up" (etc.) - that the actual work to determine what part of that it is genetic “knowledge" or “memory” of gravity – versus dynamic adaptation to gravity/motion stimuli - must wait for experiments which can only be done in space.

Am I close, Nebullis?