The discovery of how information is processed by plants
According to Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health (2020, July 1), a research team discovered the way plants process information about their surrounding environment.
Plants for producing fruits and seeds, there is a need for integrating information about nutrients availability, pathogens presence and water availability. For ensuring the sustainability of plant protection, it is essential to have a deep understanding of processes taking place at the molecular level in plants which are responsible for processing information. There are researches which clarified how various signaling mechanisms are governed by some hormones in plant. Despite those signaling pathways were greatly investigated, there are still gaps when it comes to the clarification of how the exchange of information between them takes place.
New and several exchange points for information discovered in plants
Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München, from the Institute of Network Biology in collaboration with biologists from the LMU studied the network of molecular protein in plants. In the study, more than 17 million pairs of protein were tested through experiments for examining physical interactions. The research team used a combination of a pipeline of next-gen robotics and methods of the latest bioinformatics. There was an observation of a network of more than 2 thousand interactions of proteins which was subjected to analysis by use of graph theory and statistics involving bioinformatic mathematical approaches for finding points of signaling pathways and exchange of potential information. Finally, the team were able to identify new hundreds of such points.
Multiple signaling pathways is a way for functioning for several proteins
After genetical testing, it was shown that all examined points of information exchange between proteins which were considered to operate in single signaling pathways, were instead found organized with a communication between various pathways. This became one of surprising findings from this research as it proved that proteins generally operate in multiple signaling pathways. Furthermore, contrary to examination of single-gene, study results suggested the existence of functionally and physically interlinked various pathways at a high degree. Dr. Melina Altmann as the first author of the research said that such study finding is believed to be the basic principle and more attention need to be paid to it.
Besides, Prof. Pascal Falter-Braun, Professor at LMU and Director at the Institute of Network Biology added that such new findings might lead to the opening of new strategies for plants breeding or biotechnological advancement for addressing issues of climate change in agriculture. Such new insight gives information which can be used in crop production so that plants can be highly drought resistant, demand less pesticide or small amount of fertilizer.
Source
Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health. (2020, July 1). To listen is to survive: Unravelling how plants process information. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 4, 2020, from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200701125427.htm
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