A scientist From Virginia Tech, Jim Westwood, has discovered
that plants are communication on a molecular level. His finding reveal that this communication is
happening on a much larger scale and very more frequent than was previously thought.
Westwood found that communications between the two plants happens via mRNA.
mRNA was previously thought to be very fragile. Researchers’ state that this
discover has many implications, locally and globally. The role of mRNA could be
exploited as a way to protect crops, especially the crops that feed a large
denomination of the world’s poorest countries.
This protection would be instrumented by the disruption of mRNA in the process
of communication between plants and parasites. Discoveries like this illustrate
the importance of agricultural research and that there is still much to learn
about our environment.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140814191939.htm
Cool article! Plants communicating never seemed very plausible to me until I read this article. One thing that amazes me is how many things are still undiscovered in this world. As far as I know mRNA sends messages between cells giving them specific directions on what actions to perform. So in order for the plants to communicate are they switching cells or sharing the same cells? Also I don’t quite understand how this is going to produce more efficient food sources? I guess they could try to genetically engineer the mRNA to make it send specific messages to the other plant. Nonetheless this article is very interesting to me and I look forward to seeing if more research is done on this topic in the near future.
ReplyDeleteI never knew that plants could ever be able to communicate because I never thought that they would need to so that is really interesting to me. How exactly does the mRNA protect crops? It is confusing to me that plants communicating would ever benefit anyone or protect crops. The article is very intriguing though because I'm sure no one really thinks about plants communicating to each other and why that would be necessary.
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