TUCSON This machine sounds like a kitchen blender with its sharp gears and long metal rod, but it is far from a kitchen appliance.
This is a tissue mixer, according to Jesse Woodson (associate professor at the University of Arizonas School of Plant Sciences).
Scientists at UArizona created the blender as part of a study to learn how plants communicate with each other. The ultimate goal of the project is to engineer plants that can survive in a warmer environment.
Woodson stated that we want to be able communicate with plants. To do this, we must understand how plants think about their environment and be capable of sensing it.
Woodson and his students are part of a larger network of researchers. The National 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 CROPPS, the foundation’s new Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems. According to the National Science Foundation, the scientists are trying to predict and manipulate agricultural molecularly to increase productivity and sustainability. This transdisciplinary effort brings together engineers, scientists, and computer scientists to develop electronic systems that monitor and control the reactions of plants.
UArizona received $3.5 millionTo study the plant genes and their biological reactions to their environment. Although data analytics will be used, the team wants to first understand the language of plants.
Although they cannot communicate, plants transmit internal signals all the while.
They might be sending those signals internally within the body of the plant to help the shoots understand what’s going on in the roots, said Rebecca Mosher, the lead investigator on the CROPPS project for UArizona. They might be trying to recruit soil microbes with those signals. So we want to understand these signals so we can tap into them and communicate directly with the plants.
These signals are very similar to those our brains send when we are hungry or stressed. Woodson stated that plants do not have the same response as humans. Plants are unable to move.
You can run away from anything if you want to get away. But a plant needs to be there and have to deal with what happens, he explained. So if it’s a hot day, it’s a dry day, there’s too much sun, if there’s not enough sun, the plant needs to do something about that in order to grow.
If a plant is forced into growing in one place, it creates an survival guide that it then passes on to the next plants. They learn how to conserve resources, adapt to their environment, and how to adapt to it.
You can’t always go by the looks or how big its brain is, but how much it can alter itself in order to fix the environment and with it in which it has to live, Woodson said. It’s going to have to deal with that at a very genetic level. They need a lot of genes and a lot information in their cells to be able grow and prosper.
Rebecca Mosher, the lead investigator for the UArizona project, is funded by the National Science Foundation. The project aims at understanding how plants communicate with the environment. Tucson, Feb. 1, 2022. (Photo by Emma VandenEinde/Cronkite News).
Experimenting to Understand
Before the soybeans and rice plants enter the lab, the plants are grown in greenhouses that are located on the roof of a Tucson parking garage. The environment in those greenhouses is altered.
Mosher explained that we could give it high levels of light or heat, which can lead to a variety abiotic stresses. You can also infect it by pathogens, so abiotic stress. And then we’ll collect that tissue and take it into the laboratory.
The team extracts cells from the lab using a variety methods. They can spin plants in a centrifuge or jostle them in vials containing beads. The researchers then examine cells under the microscope.
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The tissue homogenizer is a rod that has sharp teeth at the ends. It cuts through plant tissue to reveal the cells of the plant. The cells of these cells contain chloroplasts. These are responsible for sensing light and performing photosynthesis.
A lot of what we’re trying to look at is how components within cells, how cells do photosynthesis and respond to the environment, Woodson said. The homogenizer is basically an expensive blender that opens cells to allow us to extract the chloroplasts for experiments in the laboratory.
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.
Most of us look into a pathway where chloroplasts do the photosynthesis in plant cells (and look at) how they’re recycled, how they’re damaged and how the plant deals with those damaged cells, Salazar De Leon said.
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 trying to prove that removing a specific gene that encodes for an enzyme can cause a plant’s death. He hopes to discover similar patterns in other plants.
He explained that this is just one part of a larger biochemical pathway that allows plants the ability to respond to ultraviolet light stress.
Cristian Salazar De Leon crosses pollinates Arabidopsis plant under the microscope at Tucson on February 1, 2022. They lack the gene that can help the small flowering plant survive in high-stress situations. (Photo by Emma VandenEinde/Cronkite News.)
Arizona’s climate is perfect 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 our environment is extremely hot and incredibly arid. The world will be more like Arizona as the planet heats.
According to the National Weather Service, last year was the sixth hottest on record. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. 2020 was even more hot, being the second-warmest ever recorded year. It was the fifth-warmest December for 142 years, thanks to the high temperatures in December 2021.
These experiments with plants could help scientists to better support plants and crops that are more resilient to temperature fluctuations as temperatures rise due to human activity.
Woodson said that if we could understand how plants grow in extreme heat and with limited water, maybe we could create new breeds or varieties that are more able to grow well.
The UArizona Project is expected to last for five more years. Scientists believe that more research could reveal more about plants and their adaptation to climate change.
