Photo: Rebecca Mosher, the lead investigator of the UArizona Team
The machine has sharp teeth and a long rod of metal. However, it is far from your typical appliance.
This is a tissue homogenizer according to Jesse Woodson, an associate Professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Plant Sciences.
Scientists at UArizona are working on a project to understand how plants communicate with one another. This blender is part of a larger project. The ultimate goal is for engineers to create plants that can withstand a warmer world.
Woodson stated, “We want to be in communication with the plants.” Woodson said that in order to communicate with plants, we need to understand how they think about their environment.
Woodson and his students are part of a larger network of researchers. TheNational Science FoundationIn October, a$25 million grantThe Boyce Thompson Institute, Cornell University, and UArizona in New York have teamed up to study plant communication in an effort to modify plants for a warmer, drier future.
Their research is part the foundation’s new Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS). According to the National Science Foundation, the scientists are trying to predict and manipulate agricultural molecularly to increase productivity and sustainability. The transdisciplinary effort brings together computer scientists, engineers, and scientists to create electronic systems capable of controlling and monitoring the responses of plants.
UArizona received$3.5 MillionTo study the plant genes and their biological reactions to their environment. While data analytics will be used by the team, they first need to understand the language of plants as the project begins.
Even though their communication isn’t audible they send internal signals all day.
According to Rebecca Mosher, lead investigator of the CROPPS project at UArizona, they might be sending signals within the plant’s body to help the shoots understand what is happening in the roots. They might be trying to recruit soil microbes with those signals. We want to be able to tap into those signals and communicate with them ourselves.
These internal signals are similar in nature to the signals that our brains send us when there is stress or a need for nutrition. Woodson stated that plants do not have the same response as humans. Plants are unable to move.
You can run away if you want to get away. He said that plants must remain where they are and have to deal with what happens. If it’s hot, it’s dry, there’s too much sun, and if there’s not enough, the plant must do something to make sure it grows.
The plant creates a survival guide when it is forced to grow in a particular spot. This guide is passed on to the next plant. It then learns how conserve resources and adapt to its environment.
Woodson stated that you can’t always judge a person’s looks and brain size. But, you can see how it can change its environment to improve the way it lives. It will have to deal with this at a very genetic level. To be able grow and prosper, they will need many genes and lots of information stored in their cells.
Experimenting to Understand
Before the soybean and rice plants can enter the lab, they are grown in greenhouses on top of a parking lot south of Tucson campus. The plants’ environment is altered in these greenhouses.
Mosher explained that we could give it high levels of light or heat, which can lead to a variety abiotic stresses. It can also be infected with pathogens. Then you can take the tissue and bring it into the laboratory.
The lab is where the team extracts cells using a variety of methods, including spinning plants in a centrifuge and jostling them with beads in vials. The microscope is used to examine the cells.
The tissue homogenizer, a rod with sharp teeth at its end, is one of the most important tools researchers use. It cuts through tough plant tissue to reach the plants cells. These cells contain the chloroplasts which are responsible for detecting light and performing photosynthesis.
Woodson explained that a lot of what we were trying to study was how cells work together, how they respond to their environment and how photosynthesis works. The homogenizer is essentially a fancy blender that breaks down cells to pull out the chloroplasts and performs lab experiments.
Cristian Salazar De Leon is one of the Woodsons graduate students. He said that the results of the chloroplasts can tell a lot about plants’ reactions to high heat.
Salazar De Leon stated that most people look at the pathway where chloroplasts perform photosynthesis in plant cells and then look at how they are recycled, damaged, and how the plant deals.
From there, scientists can identify the genes that help the plant grow in harsh conditions and cross-pollinate them to get similar results. Salazar De Leon is attempting to prove that the removal of a particular gene that encodes a specific enzyme can cause a plant to die. He hopes to see these patterns in other plants.
He said that this is only one part of a biochemical pathway that allows plants respond to UV light stress.
Arizona’s climate is ideal for testing
Although each university is funded by the NSF has its own lab for testing, Arizona’s climate allows for experimentation in a unique setting.
Woodson stated that the environment we live in is extremely hot and incredibly dry. As the planet heats up, the world will look more like Arizona.
According to Weather Underground, the sixth-warmest year on record was last year.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. 2020 was even hotter, it was the second-warmest year ever. It was the fifth-warmest December for 142 years, thanks to the high temperatures in December 2021.
As global warming causes temperatures to rise, scientists could use these experiments to help develop crops and plants that are more resistant to temperature changes.
Woodson stated that it would be possible to create new breeds of plants and varieties that can grow better if we could understand how plants respond to water shortages in very hot environments.
The UArizona Project is expected to last for five more years. Scientists believe that more research will reveal more about plants, and how they adapt to climate change.
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(Photo by Emma VandenEinde/Cronkite News
