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[av_heading heading=’Like us, plants can become stressed too’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY JULIO P. YAP JR.
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January 31, 2018
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DO you know that plants also become stressed toowhenever they are subjected to different conditions?
A recent research disclosed for the first time that, despite not having a nervous system, the plants use signals that are normally associated with animals whenever they encounter stress.
This interesting agricultural development came out after researchers from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at the University of Adelaide in Adelaide, South Australia, conducted a study on how plants respond to their environment with a similar combination of chemical and electrical responses to animals – but through machinery that is specific to plants.
“We have known for a long-time that the animal neurotransmitter GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is produced by plants under stress, for example when they encounter drought, salinity, viruses, acidic soils or extreme temperatures,” said senior author Associate Professor Matthew Gilliham, an ARC Future Fellow at the University’s School of Agriculture, Food, and Wine.
“But it was not known whether the GABA was a signal in plants,” he added.
We have discovered that plants bind the GABA in a similar way to animals, resulting in electrical signals that ultimately regulate plant growth when a plant is exposed to a stressful environment, Gilliham explained.
According to the researchers, by identifying how plants will respond to GABA, they are optimistic that they have opened up many new possibilities for modifying how plants respond to stress.
The major stresses that agricultural cropsface, such as pathogens and poor environmental conditions, account for most yield losses in many parts of the world – and consequently create food shortages.
“By identifying how plants use GABA as a stress signal, we have a new tool to help in the global effort to breed more stress resilient crops to fight food insecurity,” said co-lead author Professor Stephen Tyerman.
Despite a similar function, the proteins that bind GABA and their mammalian counterparts only resemble each other in the region where they interact with the neurotransmitter – the rest of the protein looks quite different, the researchers pointed out.
“This raises very interesting questions about how GABA has been recruited as a messenger in both plant and animal kingdoms,” according to co-lead author Dr. Sunita Ramesh.
“It seems likely that this has evolved in both kingdoms separately,” Dr. Ramesh pointed out.
According to the researchers, these findings could also answer the various questions as to why particular plant-deriveddrugs which are used as sedatives and anti-epileptics work well in humans.
They said that these drugs are able to interact with proteins in the GABA-signalling system in both the plants and animals.
This suggests that future work on other plant GABA signalling agents will also benefit the medical field.
To know more about the characteristics of the different plant varieties, the farmers will be able to improve their farming practices to avoid losses.
Once perfected, this methodology could help the agriculturists in the country in maintaining the productivity of agricultural crops towards achieving and sustaining the government’s food self-sufficiency program. (jaypeeyap@ymail.com/PN)
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