from the staccato-signals-of-constant-information dept.
How plants' threat-detection mechanisms raise the alarm:
New work led by Carnegie's Zhiyong Wang untangles a complex cellular signaling process that underpins plants' ability to balance expending energy on growth and defending themselves from pathogens. These findings, published in Nature Plants, show how plants use complex cellular circuits to process information and respond to threats and environmental conditions.
"Plants don't have brains like us, and they may be fixed in place and unable to flee from predators or pathogens, but don't feel sorry for them, because they've evolved an incredible network of information-processing circuits that enable them to 'make decisions' in response to the situations in which they find themselves," Wang explained.
[...] Higher plants put hundreds of highly specialized sensors, called receptor kinases, on their cell surfaces to monitor the environment and to communicate between cells. Wang's lab is working to elucidate the molecular circuits that connect these sensors to specific cellular responses, such as growth and immunity. Improving our understanding of how plants make cellular decisions can underpin technological interventions for improving agricultural yields in the face of a warming planet.
[...] When a plant senses a threat, it needs to activate communication chains that raise the alarm and tell it to fight off the pathogen. There are two main types of threat-detection mechanisms in plant cells—the ability to recognize distinctive chemical patterns that signify an invader, such as components of a bacterial cell, and the ability to recognize a disruption caused by invading pathogen.
[...] The researchers were surprised to discover that BSU1 engages in two entirely separate interaction chains. In the brassinosteroid pathway, BSU1 is involved with the hormone's growth and development functions. In the pattern-recognition pathway, BSU1 is involved in activating immunity upon threat-detection. BSU1 translates the codes from the different sensors by using different segments of its structure to accept the chemical tag, with each location representing a different message.
Taken together, these results demonstrate the interconnected complexity of growth and immune response. Furthermore, they are a stunning revelation of the way plant's take in information, process it through biochemical circuits that mimic a binary computer language, and react to environmental conditions to improve their chances of survival.
Journal Reference:
Park, Chan Ho, Bi, Yang, Youn, Ji-Hyun, et al. Deconvoluting signals downstream of growth and immune receptor kinases by phosphocodes of the BSU1 family phosphatases, Nature Plants, 2022. (DOI: 10.1038/s41477-022-01167-1)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 15 2022, @02:10PM (3 children)
Fantastic Fungi on Netflix would also like to propose that fungal symbiotes carry physical resources and information in the form of electrical impulses among the roots of all forest plants and trees.
They would also like to propose that Magic Mushroom trips cure depression, PTSD and anxiety, among other beneficial effects - for entertainment only, not as medical advice.
Anecdotal evidence would seem to suggest they are on to something. But the usual conspiracy theories apply: no profit in single dose treatments, free thinkers won't fight your wars for you, etc.
Is it still paranoia if they really are out to get you?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday June 16 2022, @04:20PM (2 children)
See 'Finding the Mother Tree', the autobiography of Suzanna Simard.
Her life's work was the scientific experimentation that demonstrated that trees use fungi to share resources and information.
Not just trees of one species either, resources are shared between trees of different species as well.
The results are causing a slow revolution in forestry practices.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 16 2022, @05:00PM (1 child)
To be fair, most things in forestry practices happen slowly...
I'd really like to see some sort of incentive structure for growing a healthy forest, vs a fertilizer pumped pulp crop field. There is real additional value in non-monoculture stands of mixed ages that aren't clear-cut every 22 years, it's just difficult to convince the new owners who just inherited the land from their dead Uncle that anything matters beyond the size of the check they can get from selling the trees and land as soon as it's out of probate.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday June 17 2022, @12:57AM
I agree.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 15 2022, @02:41PM (2 children)
Plants don't only communicate with themselves, or even with other plants. We tend to forget that the soil is alive with zillions of living things, both plant and animal.
Plants have been demonstrated to communicate with chemical signals, to activate, or to deactivate, or to elicit specific responses of nematodes and other organisms in the soil.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2634023/ [nih.gov]
Plants are much more complex than most people ever suspect.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 15 2022, @06:50PM
And, when drought hits, my blueberry bushes' roots come under attack from all kinds of things wanting their water... lost another bush this year before the water stress seemed bad enough to initiate irrigation - one day fine, next day dead.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday June 15 2022, @08:21PM
It's also looking like plants may in fact have brains. Not like ours certainly - but there's a section just behind the "digging tip" of each root tip that demonstrates standing-wave electrical activity of a size and complexity comparable to a worm's brain. (if I recall correctly the system is electro-hydraulic rather than electro-chemical like animal brains)
Which kind of makes sense, as a root tip's job is not that unlike a worm's - burrowing through ground looking for resources and avoiding hazards, and in time-lapse display behavior very reminiscent of worms as well. Root tips also have a pretty incredible range of chemoreceptors (smell/taste) as sensory input, and it's not yet clear to what degree the tips may coordinate their activity, so there's potential for a more sophisticated "hive-mind" as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 15 2022, @05:05PM (2 children)
If these plants are so smart, then why are we dominating them and destroying them so easily? Fucking pussies, they got nuthin'.
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 15 2022, @06:52PM (1 child)
Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because he has achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.
But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
- D. Adams
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 17 2022, @12:17PM
If Star Trek was more hard core SF the coming home movie would have had the returning aliens trying to communicate with the remnants of the forests and helping them to extinguish the (human) blight that had decimated them.
But whales had a proven box office draw, and the story could reach "happy ending" in a relatable timespan.
.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end