Herself's Houseplants

You know that carnivorous plants eat bugs. The pitcher part of the plant acts as a stomach. Some scientists in Japan have recently figured out what chemicals they use to do this.

Japanese scientists now report completely deciphering this complex cocktail of digestive and antibacterial enzymes. Their study is scheduled for the February issue of ACS’ Journal of Proteome Research.Unlike other plants that absorb nutrients from the soil, carnivorous plants growing in nutrient-poor soils have special organs to capture insects, digest them and absorb the nitrogen and phosphorous their environment sorely lacks. The identity of all the myriad proteins involved in this evolutionary marvel — some of which could have beneficial applications in medicine and agriculture — has been a mystery until now.

Tatsuro Hamada and Naoya Hatano used cutting-edge proteomic analysis to identify all of the components. They isolated and sequenced the proteins, then compared each with existing proteins to find structural matches.

Hamada and Hatano detected seven proteins that exist mainly in the pitcher fluid of N. alata — three of which can only be found in this species — including useful enzymes that may inhibit bacterial growth and rotting as the plant slowly digests its prey. [ read more Secret of the carnivorous pitcher plant's slurp]

Also reporting on this story in more detail is Nature…

The fluid at the base of the trap had long been thought to contain digestive enzymes. Previous research had confirmed this, but exactly which enzymes were present was anyone’s guess. “Digestion in pitcher plants has been actively studied for more than 150 years and we still don’t know how it works [because] it is such a complex process,” says Chris Frazier at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Now, Naoya Hatano from the Harima Institute in Riken and Tatsuro Hamada from Ishikawa Prefectural University in Japan have identified seven proteins in the carnivorous plant’s fluid. They grew the carnivorous plants in their lab, and collected the fluid from newly opened pitchers to prevent contamination from recently captured insects. Then they used polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis to separate out the proteins, and mass spectrometry to identify what type of enzymes the proteins were likely to be. Because some of the enzymes they found were unfamiliar, they searched protein databases to find enzymes with similar structures and noted that some of them were probably not digestive at all. [ read more Little lab of horrors ]

A University of Virginia study, published in the Nov. 16 issue of the journal Science, demonstrates that plants grown in the same setting as their maternal plant performed almost 3.5 times better than those raised in a different environment – indicating that maternal plants give cues to their offspring that help them adapt to their environmental conditions.

[ read more Evolutionary biology research on plants shows significance of maternal effects]

Plants drop seeds that generally land right near the original plant. The seeds then grow in the same conditions as the original plant. Changing those conditions, even a little effects the growth of the plant.

What this means for house plant growers is that you should experiment a bit. Start with the general recommended conditions for your plant. If your plant doesn’t thrive try shifting things a little. Change one thing at a time ( more sun/less sun, more water/less water ). Watch and see which changes, if any please your plant more.

Many successful robots are based on insects, now at the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology investigators are looking into plant intelligence in the hope it too will give us insight into ways to better build robots and smart systems.

SESTO FIORENTINO, Italy — Professor Stefano Mancuso knows it isn’t easy being green: He runs the world’s only laboratory dedicated to plant intelligence.At the International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology (LINV), about seven miles outside Florence, Italy, Mancuso and his team of nine work to debunk the myth that plants are low-life. Research at the modern building combines physiology, ecology and molecular biology.”If you define intelligence as the capacity to solve problems, plants have a lot to teach us,” says Mancuso, dressed in harmonizing shades of his favorite color: green. “Not only are they ’smart’ in how they grow, adapt and thrive, they do it without neuroses. Intelligence isn’t only about having a brain.”[ read more Smarty Plants: Inside the world's only plant-intelligence lab ]

Plants self-regulate their populations to maintain stability and optimize their lives, with the lengths of their lives directly related to their mass, a recent study has found. Further, a single scaling power for lifespan holds true across the entire spectrum of plants, from single-celled phototrophs to giant redwoods.

Scientists have long known that animals’ lifespans are closely scaled to the species’ body size, with elephants living longer than mice. But while plant biologists have predicted such a connection in plants, a full study has never been performed until now. . . .

The researchers found that both population mortality rates and population birth rates of all plant species scale as the –¼ power of plant mass. In other words, the smaller a plant, the higher its mortality and birth rates, meaning the shorter its lifespan. Hence, plant lifespan scales as almost exactly the ¼ power of plant mass.
[ read more Plants live, die according to size ]