HomeScience and ResearchScientific ResearchNew Experiment Reveals A Secret Communication System Of 'Touch-Me-Not' Plant - Videos

New Experiment Reveals A Secret Communication System Of ‘Touch-Me-Not’ Plant – Videos

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Unlike animals, plants lack the nerves and muscles necessary for quick movement.
But Mimosa pudica, also known as the touch-me-not, shame, or sensitive plant, moves its leaves by twisting the “pulvinus” motor organ instantly in reaction to touch and injury.
This amazing movement of the leaves has been researched ever since Charles Darwin’s time.

But scientists still don’t know much about the long-distance signaling molecules that cause the leaves to move quickly and the physiological roles of this movement.

The study, led by Professor Masatsugu Toyota (Saitama University, Japan), discovered which signals travel across great distances and initiate rapid leaf movement in Mimosa pudica, as well as why Mimosa pudica moves its leaves so rapidly.

The findings were published in Nature Communications today.

Takuma Hagihara, a Ph.D. student in Toyota’s lab, led the research and collaborated with researchers from Hasebe’s group at Japan’s National Institute for Basic Biology.

“To clarify the long-distance signals and physiological functions of the rapid leaf movements,” explains the author, they “created transgenic ‘fluorescent’ and ‘immotile’ Mimosa pudica.”

The videos (Videos #1 and #2) show that bursts of fluorescence move quickly through the leaves and make the leaves move.

In real-time, the fluorescent light shows where the calcium is in the cytosol.

Video no 3 shows “Mimosa pudica closes its leaves just 0.1 seconds after the arrival of the Ca2+ signals in the motor organ pulvini.”

According to earlier research, electrical signals like an action potential are important for the swift leaf motions in Mimosa pudica.

“We developed a simultaneous recording system for the cytosolic Ca2+ and electrical signals to reveal the spatiotemporal relationship between these signals,” adds Toyota.

When the leaf was cut, the Ca2+ and electrical signals moved through the leaf at the same speed and reached the recording site at the same time (Video #4).

As a result, in Mimosa pudica, the long-distance Ca2+ and electrical signals were spatiotemporally connected.

Mimosa pudica leaves pretreated with the Ca2+ channel inhibitors La3+ and verapamil as well as the Ca2+ chelating agent EGTA were unable to respond to the wound by moving their leaves.
These findings lend credence to the hypothesis that Ca2+ functions as a long-distance communication molecule that causes Mimosa pudica leaves to move rapidly.

“Mimosa pudica is one of the most famous plants due to its spectacular movements,” adds Toyota. “However, although there are many hypotheses for the physiological functions of the rapid leaf movements, why Mimosa pudica moves its leaves has not been scientifically elucidated.”

Toyota scientists generated an “immotile” elp1b mutant without motor organ pulvini using CRISPR/Cas9.

They compared the genetically and pharmacologically immotile Mimosa pudica to the wild-type motile Mimosa pudica and found that grasshoppers and other herbivorous insects preferred the immotile leaves more than the wild-type foliage.

Additionally, they used a microscope to see the Ca2+ signals, leaf motions, and a grasshopper’s actions on the leaf.

The leaflets moved progressively in parallel with the Ca2+ signal propagation as the grasshopper fed, and then the grasshopper stopped feeding and went away (Videos #5 and #6).

“We finally obtained evidence that rapid movements based on propagating Ca2+ and electrical signals protect Mimosa pudica from insect attacks,” the researcher adds. “Plants possess various communication systems that are normally hidden from view; seeing is believing.”

Source:10.1038/s41467-022-34106-x

Image / Video Credit: Masatsugu Toyota/Saitama University

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