We can make plants pass out—with the same drugs that mysteriously knock us out
Just like humans, plants can succumb to the effects of general anesthetic drugs [open, DOI: 10.1093/aob/mcx155], researchers report this week in the Annals of Botany. The finding is striking for a variety of reasons—there's the pesky fact that plants lack a central nervous system, for one thing. But, perhaps more noteworthy is that scientists still aren't sure how general anesthetics work on humans—let alone plants. Despite that, doctors have been using the drugs daily for more than a century to knock people out and avert pain during surgeries and other medical procedures. Yet the drugs' exact effects on our body's cells and electrical signals remain elusive.
The authors of the new study, led by Italian and German plant biologists, suggest that plants could help us—once and for all—figure out the drugs' mechanism of action. Moreover, the researchers are hopeful that after that's sorted out, plants could be a useful tool to study and develop new anesthetic drugs. "As plants in general, and the model plant [Arabidopsis] thaliana in particular, are suitable to experimental manipulation (they do not run away) and allow easy electrical recordings, we propose them as ideal model objects to study anaesthesia and to serve as a suitable test system for human anaesthesia," they conclude.
For the study, Stefano Mancuso of the University of Florence and František Baluška of the University of Bonn, along with colleagues, rounded up a variety of plants known for their movement. This includes the famous Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipulaI) and the creeping herb Mimosa pudica (sometimes called a shy plant), whose leaves fold inward when touched. The researchers also gathered carnivorous sundew plants (Drosera capensis), which have vibrant, sticky tentacles that bend to ensnare prey. Last, the researchers looked at growing pea tendrils, which twirl around as they grow upward.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 19 2017, @08:35PM (1 child)
I read the article when it first came out on Ars and I *still* don't get it. I've read somewhere that consciousness might be a quantum phenomenon, something about a coherent state across the brain's microtubules (?), but as TFS says, plants ain't got a central nervous system. So...what are these anaesthetic drugs doing? Are they just globally inhibiting action potentials, or is it something more subtle than that?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @08:03AM
Determining whether something is "awake" and responsive to stimuli on the other hand might be simpler. There's no need for something to be conscious to be able to respond to stimuli. For example, we could write a computer program to control a robot and react to stimuli - consciousness is not needed for that at all. But maybe due to some unknown law of this universe such a program might "automagically" experience consciousness too.
For all we know "everything" could have consciousness, just that only some stuff happens to the consciousness occasionally attached to working memory. So that white blood cell in your body might experience consciousness too. And maybe even a grain of sand - but it just can't experience, store or learn much.