The Lake Vostok

Lake Vostok is the largest lakes found under the surface of Antarctica. 

The lake is located beneath Russia's Vostok Station, 4,000 metres under the surface of the ice sheet. Lake Vostok covers an area of 15,690 square kilometres and thanks to the similarities to other lakes (Ontario in America and Lake Malawi in Africa) geologist could guess the period of its formation: about 65 million years ago, when Antarctica still had a tropical to subtropical climate. 

Scientists found that the lake under the ice is not froze, and the temperature could vary between 18 C to -4 C, so life could still be there!!

Russians stopped to drill in January 2011 to avoid possible contaminations, and now scientific community is try to define a way to:

- Go down the 4000m of ice (without drilling)

- Sample the water avoiding the contamination of the water

It is very easy to guess that the space agencies are extremely interested in this unique place on Earth, because if they will be able to find some living organisms they might be evolved separately from the rest of the world for 65 million years! 

I really suggest you to watch  this documentary if you haven't seen it yet:

Tobacco plants act like “evil lollipops”

Plant tricomes exuded sugar-rich compound to attract larvae, but they are like dangerous lollipops:
In fact they tag caterpillars with a distinctive odor that complements the indirect defenses of plants, providing explicit information about the location of feeding larvae to predators. Full article available on  PNAS April 25, 2011

Plants and magnetic fields

If plants generate magnetic fields, they’re not sayin’

“There is a lot of activity now by scientists studying biomagnetism in animals, but not in plants,” said Dmitry Budker, UC Berkeley professor of physics. “It is an obvious gap in science right now.”

An Orchid Explosion

Cool video showing another pollination system of orchids!
Watch it and let me know what you think!

Action potentials can affect photosynthesis

The hypothesis that chlorophyll a fluorescence is under electrochemical control has been validated in a very interesting paper pubblished in March on Journal of Experimental Botany:

A detailed analysis of chlorophyll a fluorescence kinetics and gas exchange measurements in response to generation of action potentials in irritated Dionea muscipula traps was used to determine the ‘site effect’ of the electrical signal-induced inhibition of photosynthesis.

The paper is of primary importance, linking for the first time a physiological regulation process with electrical activity in plants.

 to read the article click here

Drosera, some beautful pics

Drosera comprise one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants. They lure, capture, and digest insects using mucilaginous glands covering their leaf surface. The insects are used to supplement the poor mineral nutrition of the soil in which they grow.

I took these pictures in the Botanical Garden in Leiden, and you can clearly see the glandular tentacles, topped with sticky secretions, that cover their leaves. 

The trapping and digestion mechanism usually employs two types of glands: some glands secrete sweet mucilage to attract and ensnare insects and enzymes to digest them, and some others that absorb the resulting nutrient soup.

Dracula plants

The shade avoidance syndrome (SAS) allows plants to anticipate and avoid shading by neighbouring plants by initiating an elongation growth response.
In a new research article, pubblished on the Journal od Experimental Botany, authors were able to create a mutant that don't avoid shade: Scientists at Royal Holloway, University of London and The Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics, Barcelona have been studying the effects of this shade avoidance and are hoping to eventually impede this response to increase planting density.
Mutants not showing SAS syndrome were called dracula1

To read the article clik here Journal of Experimental Botany

Scent of death

The orchid Satyrium pumilum is able to attract insects by mimicking the smell of rotting flesh.
A new study comparing the scent of the orchids with that of roadkill is to be published in the Annals of Botany 

The author was puzzled by the shape of the flowers. They don't carry any nectar and even if they did, the spurs that would hold it are the wrong shape to feed any visitors. So how do they attract insects to pollinate their flowers?

Photos by Dennis Hansen

The roots of plant intelligence

I really like this talk, people always undervalue the importance of plants, while they represent an astonishing variety of amazing organisms...

Janine Benyus shares nature's designs | Video on TED.com

This is how I would like to start my blog: an ispiring talk about biomimetic to consider the wonders of Nature!!