科学家从燃烧植物材料产生的烟雾中找到了一种化合物，这种化合物能促进多种依赖于火的植物的种子发芽。科学家过去就知道部分植物暴露与烟雾之后会更好地发芽，但他们一直不清楚辅助发芽的活性成分是什么。文章作者说，在烟雾被更广泛地当作生态和复原工具的时，找到烟雾中的促进发芽的重要化合物将有益于园艺、农业、矿业和被损坏土地的恢复。科学家找到并合成和测量了这种化合物刺激多种植物种子发芽的能力。找到了烟雾中的这种活性成分，科学家现在有机会来揭示这个化合物是如何刺激种子发芽的。
A Compound from Smoke That Promotes Seed Germination
Exposure of seeds to aerosol smoke or crude smoke extracts stimulates the germination of a number of fire-dependent and fire-independent plant species. We now report the identity of a germination-promoting compound present in plant- and cellulose-derived smoke. The structure of this compound, deduced from spectroscopic analysis and confirmed by synthesis, was shown to be that of the butenolide, 3-methyl-2H-furo[2,3-c]pyran-2-one (1). Here we show that 1 promotes germination of a number of plant species at a level similar to that observed with plant-derived smoke water.
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