When Plants Fight Back
How do plants identify their enemies and defend themselves? That is a question that Adam Steinbrenner asked himself too, and then decided it would be a good idea to put army caterpillars on tobacco plants and see if the plant fights back. Yes, it is frankly marvelous what he found out next: in fact, the plants do fight back.
Let’s break down the plant’s journey in this fight:
Identifying a hungry caterpillar
Have you ever noticed that you’re drooling as you start eating something tasty? Just like that, caterpillars also drool when they eat. And the crazy part is that plants can feel that drool. Not a fun way to wake up: “Oh look there’s a pool of drool on us, oh shit, someone is munching on our leaves!!”
Scientists noticed that the plants have receptors in their leaves to identify caterpillar drools. Don’t ask me how they figured that one out!
Fighting the enemy
Detecting the enemy is just the start. Next, the scientists found out that the plant started producing toxins that slowed down the caterpillar’s growth. Did it make the caterpillar less hungry, or was it an occasional stomachache? That, we don’t know yet. But the scientists who weighed the caterpillars daily noticed that the caterpillars were not gaining as much weight anymore. Well, remind anyone of their weight daily, and they’ll lose their interest in food! Actually, they accounted for this by having another set of caterpillars on a similar plant that didn’t create the toxins to rule out anorexia (and a few other important things) in their caterpillars.
Adam has a mission and that is to eliminate plant pests and diseases, like the caterpillars who munch on Adam’s favorite peas, and also some diseases that cause major worldwide crop loss like Fusarium that attacks wheat. He plans to teach plants how to fight back, but he is not very good at martial arts yet. So for now, to make the plants he cares about invincible, he’s adding genes to them that can help them detect pathogens. Adam’s work could very well be the true story behind the next X-men movie: The Mutants. Wait, it seems like there’s already a movie with that title, so they’ll have to think of a new title. I’m sure they’ll manage!
Special thanks to Adam Steinbrenner for the phone call and for introducing me to his research.
