Study
GLUTAMATE RECEPTOR-LIKE genes mediate leaf-to-leaf wound signalling
Mousavi, Seyed A. R.; Chauvin, Adeline; Pascaud, François; Kellenberger, Stephan; Farmer, Edward E.
Nature, 2013
Electrical surface potentials were recorded from Arabidopsis leaves while a distant leaf was wounded, in wild-type plants and in lines with glutamate receptor-like genes disabled, and jasmonate defence gene induction measured in the distant leaf.
- Studied in
- Arabidopsis thaliana
- Sample size
- surface potential recordings across wild-type and mutant lines
Wounding produces a propagating change in membrane potential that travels to unwounded leaves and precedes defence gene expression there. Disabling particular glutamate receptor-like genes strongly reduces both the electrical signal and the distant defence response.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
Electrical signalling mediated by glutamate receptor-like channels transmits wound information between leaves and triggers jasmonate-dependent defence.
How NatureHQ reads it
Plants do use electricity to send information over distance, and this is the clean demonstration: disable the channels and both the signal and the response at the far end disappear together. What must not be smuggled in is the animal analogy. An action potential in a plant is slow — millimetres per second against tens of metres per second in a nerve — it runs through vascular tissue rather than a dedicated cell type, and there is no network doing computation on it. It is a wire, not a brain.
- One species; electrical signalling parameters differ substantially between plant groups.
- Surface potential recordings measure a correlate of the underlying ionic events rather than the events themselves.
- Electrical, calcium and hydraulic signals are tightly coupled, so assigning causation to one is difficult.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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Published by: Nature PortfolioPublished in a Nature Portfolio journal.
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