Understanding how plants react to trauma is the first step to help them better resist the damage of pollution and climate crisis.
Not just animals, but plants too are often subject to a wide range of external attacks and injuries - from infesting parasites, fungi, larvae, but also from the bites of larger animals such as caterpillars or rabbits. Unlike animals, which adopt a fight and flight response, plants have no legs and cannot run away from the attacker - but that doesn't mean they don't defend themselves in their own way.
Trauma and wounds, in fact, are triggers that activate specific defense or regeneration processes, according to a "fight or repair" response scheme - even if until now it has not been clear whether the two responses were connected to a single system of activation or to two different stimuli. Now, a new study conducted by the University of New York has tried to understand if, after an "injury", plants react by creating a compromise between tissue repair and an increase in their defenses to avoid the risk of new trauma, with one response that increases as the other decreases.
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The researchers observed the behavior of a small plant called the common arabetta (Arabidopsis thaliana). In plants with root lesions, they observed a double response - defense and regeneration of damaged tissues - but unfortunately not at the same time: only by lowering one type of response is there an increase in the other. The team described this process with the image of a seesaw: if the levels of one response go up, the others go down.
The balance between these two responses would be regulated by some proteins similar to plant glutamate receptors (GLR) - not very different from the glutamate receptors also present in our brain: these receptors play a role in increasing defenses and in regenerating after an injury. This discovery could prove very useful in improving the growth of cereal crops (in particular corn, wheat, sorghum) more resistant to attacks by animals and parasites.
Re-tuning the balance between plant defense and regeneration could be used to improve regeneration for biotechnology, conservation and propagation of staple food crops - said Professor Birnbaum, author of the study. - The breeding of crops that regenerate more readily and can adapt to new environments is essential in the face of climate change and food insecurity.
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Fonte: Developmental Cell
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