Transcription factor PIF4 controls the thermosensory activation of flowering

A new understanding of how plants control their timing of reproduction in response to temperature. 

Nature 21 March 2012 

Flowering time is an important trait in crops as well as affecting the life cycles of pollinator species. A molecular understanding of how temperature affects flowering will be important for mitigating the effects of climate change.

Back to the future!

Plants back to life after 30.000 years:

Scientists in Russia have grown plants from fruit stored away in permafrost by squirrels over 30,000 years ago.

The fruit was found in the banks of the Kolmya River in Siberia, a top site for people looking for mammoth bones. The Institute of Cell Biophysics team propagated plants of Silene stenophylla in vitro from the fruit tissues.

the full news on BBC News

PLANT-MEDIATED INTERACTIONS BETWEEN ABOVE- AND BELOW-GROUND COMMUNITIES

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jec.2010.99.issue-1/issuetoc

Special Issue
Journal of Ecology

Upcoming Conferences in the Field of Biomimetics, Plant Biology & Plant Behaviour

6th International Conference on Relating Design in Nature with Science and Engineering

11 – 13 June 2012
A Coruña, Spain

Deadline:

SEB Annual Main Meeting 2012

29th June - 2nd of July

Salzburg, Austria

Living Machines 2012

9th-12th July 2012
Barcelona, Spain  

 

Plant Biology Congress Freiburg 2012

July 29 - August 3, 2012

Freiburg

 

7th Plant Biomechanics International Conference 

20-24 August 2012

Clermont-Ferrand, France

1st Symposium on Plant Signaling and Behavior
16-21 September 2012
Perth - Western Australia

 63rd International Astronautical Congress
October, 1-5 2012
Napoli, Italy

The 3^rd International Symposium on Biomimetics "bionik-A"

October, 17^th and 18^th 2012

Villach - Austria

More about Venus flytrap!

Energetics and forces of the Dionaea muscipula trap closing
Alexander G. Volkov and coworkers


Abstract

The Venus flytrap is the most famous carnivorous plant. The electrical stimulus between a midrib and a lobe closes the Venus flytrap upper leaf in 0.3 s without mechanical stimulation of trigger hairs. Here we present results for direct measurements of the closing force of the trap of Dionaea muscipula Ellis after mechanical or electrical stimulation of the trap using the piezoelectric thin film or Fuji Prescale indicating sensor film. The closing force was 0.14 N and the corresponding pressure between rims of two lobes was 38 kPa. We evaluated theoretically using the Hydroelastic Curvature Model and compared with experimental data velocity, acceleration and kinetic energy from the time dependencies of distance between rims of lobes during the trap closing. The Charge Stimulation Method was used for trap electrostimulation between the midrib and lobes. From the dependence of voltage between two Ag/AgCl electrodes in the midrib and one of the lobes, we estimated electrical charge, current, resistance, electrical energy and electrical power dependencies on time during electrostimulation of the trap.

Journal of Plant Physiology
Volume 169, Issue 1, 1 January 2012, Pages 55-64 

Complete hunting cycle of Dionaea muscipula: Consecutive steps and their electrical properties
Alexander G. Volkov and coworkers

Abstract
In the present paper a model is presented for the dynamic response of a family (Droseraceae) of carnivorous plants such as the Venus Flytrap (Dionaea Muscipula Ellis) and the Waterwheel Plant (Aldrovanda Vesiculosa) to external dynamic disturbances. The goal of the present investigation is to apply such modelling to the molecular design of biomimetic materials with sensors and actuators. In modelling the dynamic response of such plants (or their flowers, to be exact) to external disturbances it is worth noting that these plants are capable of trapping and capturing their prey, usually small insects and flies, by the stimulation of a number of built-in trigger hairs or whisker-type sensors, which may be electro-elastic. The trapping and capturing action is quite muscular in the sense that, for example in the case of the Venus Flytrap, the flower, which is in the form of twin-lobed leaf blades closes quite quickly, upon stimulation of its trigger hairs, to trap the prey. These petals or valves are normally held ajar like an open spring trap. A victim entering the compass of the valves trips a trigger mechanism, whereupon the valves snap together with often surprising speed like a pair of jaws, and the victim is securely held within. The Venus Flytrap and Waterwheel Plant are closely related, though the former is terrestrial while the latter is aquatic. They belong to the same family as the Sundews (Droseraceae). The purpose of the present paper is to present a model for such intelligent structures with built-in sensors and muscular actuators in the hope of being able to fabricate similar intelligent materials (biomimetics) and intelligent structures for practical applications. Another remarkable property of the Venus Flytrap is that it is indeed possible to spring the trap without touching the trigger hairs — by repeated rubbing or scratching of the surface of the lobes for example — but the insect always does so by touching one or more trigger hairs. Based on a number of experimental observations in our laboratory we present a model for sensing and actuation of the Venus Flytrap. Our model is based on redistribution of ions and in particular Ca²⁺ and H⁺ ions in the tissue volumes. Generation of action potential simulation of trigger whiskers creates an ionic membrane type depolarization wave that propagates throughout the flower tissues.

Journal of Plant Physiology
Volume 168, Issue 2, 15 January 2011, Pages 109-120 

The New Phytologist - Special Issue: Plant anaerobiosis

Special Issue: Plant anaerobiosis
April 2011
Volume 190, Issue 2
Pages 269–508

Table of content

Damping by branching: a bioinspiration from trees

Bioinsp. Biomim. 6 (2011) 046010 (11pp) Download the pdf here

Abstract
Man-made slender structures are known to be sensitive to high levels of vibration due to their
flexibility which often cause irreversible damage. In nature, trees repeatedly endure large
amplitudes of motion, mostly caused by strong climatic events, yet with minor or no damage
in most cases. A new damping mechanism inspired by the architecture of trees is identified
here and characterized in the simplest tree-like structure, a Y-shaped branched structure.
Through analytical and numerical analyses of a simple two-degree-of-freedom model,
branching is shown to be the key ingredient in this protective mechanism that we call
damping-by-branching. It originates in the geometrical nonlinearities so that it is specifically
efficient to damp out large amplitudes of motion. A more realistic model, using flexible beam
approximation, shows that the mechanism is robust. Finally, two bioinspired architectures are
analyzed, showing significant levels of damping achieved via branching with typically 30% of
the energy being dissipated in one oscillation. This concept of damping-by-branching is of
simple practical use in the design of very slender and flexible structures subjected to extreme
dynamical loadings.

Resurrection plants

from How Plants Work.com :

One of the main problems for plants when they colonized terrestrial environments on Earth nearly a half billion years ago was how to survive the dryness.

Resurrection plants, however, display the remarkable ability to survive near total desiccation (less than 5% relative water content), which causes them to appear dead. But when rehydrated, these plants can be revived. Hence, they are often referred to as “resurrection plants”.

Probably the most well-known is the species Selaginella lepidophylla

Briefly, the onset of water loss apparently sets into motion a series of cellular events that can be summarized as follows:

Dehydration –> Activation of “desiccation-related” genes –> (1) Alterations in metabolism and (2) Production of “protective” proteins

(1) Alterations in metabolism: (a) accumulation of protective solutes such as sucrose, trehalose, and proline that stabilize proteins and cellular membranes, (b) production of antioxidant compounds (such as galloylquinic acids), and (c) biochemical alterations in membrane and cell wall composition.

(2) Production of “protective” proteins such as “dehydrins” and “expansins” that help preserve the structural integrity of intracellular organelles and the cell walls.

References
1. Moore, J.P., et al. (2006) “Response of the Leaf Cell Wall to Desiccation in the Resurrection Plant Myrothamnus flabellifolius.” Plant Physiology Vol. 141, pp. 651–662.
2. Layton, B.E., et al. (2010) “Dehydration-induced expression of a 31-kDa dehydrin in Polypodium polypodioides (Polypodiaceae) may enable large, reversible deformation of cell walls.” American Journal of Botany Vol. 97, pp. 535-544.
3. Moore, J.P., et al. (2009) “Towards a systems-based understanding of plant desiccation tolerance.” Trends in Plant Science Vol. 14, pp. 110-117.

And this amazing plants are at the basis of a long-term thermostabilization process to preserve vaccines,
here some more details:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1281/
http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/2/19/19ra12.abstract
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-322568/Vaccine-breakthrough-revolutionise-Third-World-health.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17661683

L'utopia tranquilla delle piante - The calm utopia of plants

sorry, in Italian only from the

Festival della Scienza di Genova

October 28, 2011

Stefano Mancuso

"Le piante hanno comportamenti sofisticati ed evoluti, una vita sociale meravigliosamente ricca e, in generale, una affascinante complessità che per millenni è rimasta sepolta sotto la loro apparente immobilità.
Mitezza contro violenza, fissità contro movimento, autotrofia contro eterotrofia, lentezza contro velocità: piante e animali sono il risultato di scelte evolutive opposte. Praticamente inermi, alla base della catena alimentare, eppure capaci di colonizzare la Terra fino a rappresentarne il 98% della biomassa, nella vita delle piante esiste un’idea utopistica e rivoluzionaria, che ne rende avvincente e imprevedibile il loro studio. Unici organismi viventi realmente "verdi" (in tutti i sensi), hanno evoluto strategie di comportamento così diverse da quelle degli animali da essere per noi una fonte inesauribile di originalissimi insegnamenti. Senza l’aggressività e prepotenza degli animali, senza la pressante necessità di uccidere per sopravvivere, le piante sono la realizzazione terrena del discorso della montagna: sono loro i miti che un giorno erediteranno la terra."

Watch the video here:
http://www.festivalscienzalive.it/site/home/conferenze/utopia-tranquilla-delle-piante.html

Dutch PlantLab Revolutionizes Farming

Soilless coltivation, LEDs, highly controlled environmental conditions, advanced sensors...they call it agricolture 3.0!  In short, they create a high tech paradise for plants...
Will the quality decrease? who knows, but the possibility to grow plants undergroung or at the top of skyscrapers is fascinating! Urban agriculture isn’t new, and people have been talking about vertical farms for decades.What makes PlantLab different is the hardcore scientific and mathematical innovation they are bringing to the table! Could we grow vegetables in space using this amazing facility?!

http://www.plantlab.nl/4.0/

Plant nanotoxicology: how nanoparticles can affect plant's (and human) healt

Published this month on Trends in Plant Science, here is the abstract of the paper:

"The anthropogenic release of nanoparticles (NPs) to the environment poses a potential hazard to human health and life. The interplay between NPs and biological processes is receiving increasing attention. Plants expose huge interfaces to the air and soil environment. Thus, NPs are adsorbed to the plant surfaces, taken up through nano- or micrometer-scale openings of plants and are translocated within the plant body. Persistent NPs associated with plants enter the human food chain. In this Opinion, we document the occurrence and character of NPs in the environment and evaluate the need for future research on toxicological effects. Plant nanotoxicology is introduced as a discipline that explores the effects and toxicity mechanisms of NPs in plants, including transport, surface interactions and material-specific responses."

Plant nanotoxicology
Dietz, Karl-Josef; Herth, Simone
Trends in plant science doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2011.08.003 

Marijuana Genome Sequenced For Health

"The company hopes the data will help scientists breed pot plants without much THC, the mind-altering chemical in the plant. The goal is instead to maximize other compounds that may have therapeutic benefits."

"Cannabis sativa has 84 other compounds that could fight pain or possibly even shrink tumors. But anti-marijuana laws make it difficult for scientists to breed and study the plant in most countries."

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/08/19/139762352/cracking-the-marijuana-genome-in-search-of-therapeutic-highs?ps=sh_sthdl

How computer science meets plant world

It is interesting to see how biologist and computer scientists share their expertise to study the complex world of the early responses of higher plants to abiotic stresses such as drought, flooding, heat, cold, ozone, and salt. 

The key to understanding the stress responses is signal transduction pathways, and the way researchers of  the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech are addressing the problem is quite unusual:

They will archive signaling pathways for abiotic stress responses in a database, ”Beacon",  a new systems biology tool that allows the plant biologist to construct and edit signaling pathways. With this information, it will be possible to integrate current and future data over multiple scales of a cell’s organization and across species.

Their work should allow the computational and statistical means to assess if the activity of one molecule causes a response in a second molecule. Innovative components of the Beacon system allow the possibility of simulating particular environmental conditions in order to identify potential new connections in these networks.

Let's wait and see how things will go!


http://www.eng.vt.edu/news/plant-biology-meets-computational-wizardry

Charles Darwin and the Origins of Plant Evolutionary Developmental Biology

Plant Cell: Charls Darwin was the first person who carefully read and internalize the remarkable advances in the understanding of plant morphogenesis in the 1840s and 1850s, and his notebooks, correspondence, and unpublished manuscripts clearly demonstrate that he had discovered the developmental basis for the evolutionary transformation of plant form

The Plant Cell Online April 2011

Nectar: generation, regulation and ecological functions

In the April Issue of Trends in Plant Science, Martin Heil reviews the recent breakthroughs in the research on nectar proteomics and on the multiple roles of invertases in nectar secretion. Read the article.

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.”

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

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