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Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts?
Adaptation and response to environmental changes require dynamic and fast information distribution within the plant body. If one part of a plant is exposed to stress, attacked by other organisms or exposed to any other kind of threat, the information travels to neighboring organs and even neighborin...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8003533/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33808792 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22063152 |
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author | Oelmüller, Ralf |
author_facet | Oelmüller, Ralf |
author_sort | Oelmüller, Ralf |
collection | PubMed |
description | Adaptation and response to environmental changes require dynamic and fast information distribution within the plant body. If one part of a plant is exposed to stress, attacked by other organisms or exposed to any other kind of threat, the information travels to neighboring organs and even neighboring plants and activates appropriate responses. The information flow is mediated by fast-traveling small metabolites, hormones, proteins/peptides, RNAs or volatiles. Electric and hydraulic waves also participate in signal propagation. The signaling molecules move from one cell to the neighboring cell, via the plasmodesmata, through the apoplast, within the vascular tissue or—as volatiles—through the air. A threat-specific response in a systemic tissue probably requires a combination of different traveling compounds. The propagating signals must travel over long distances and multiple barriers, and the signal intensity declines with increasing distance. This requires permanent amplification processes, feedback loops and cross-talks among the different traveling molecules and probably a short-term memory, to refresh the propagation process. Recent studies show that volatiles activate defense responses in systemic tissues but also play important roles in the maintenance of the propagation of traveling signals within the plant. The distal organs can respond immediately to the systemic signals or memorize the threat information and respond faster and stronger when they are exposed again to the same or even another threat. Transmission and storage of information is accompanied by loss of specificity about the threat that activated the process. I summarize our knowledge about the proposed long-distance traveling compounds and discuss their possible connections. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8003533 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80035332021-03-28 Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? Oelmüller, Ralf Int J Mol Sci Review Adaptation and response to environmental changes require dynamic and fast information distribution within the plant body. If one part of a plant is exposed to stress, attacked by other organisms or exposed to any other kind of threat, the information travels to neighboring organs and even neighboring plants and activates appropriate responses. The information flow is mediated by fast-traveling small metabolites, hormones, proteins/peptides, RNAs or volatiles. Electric and hydraulic waves also participate in signal propagation. The signaling molecules move from one cell to the neighboring cell, via the plasmodesmata, through the apoplast, within the vascular tissue or—as volatiles—through the air. A threat-specific response in a systemic tissue probably requires a combination of different traveling compounds. The propagating signals must travel over long distances and multiple barriers, and the signal intensity declines with increasing distance. This requires permanent amplification processes, feedback loops and cross-talks among the different traveling molecules and probably a short-term memory, to refresh the propagation process. Recent studies show that volatiles activate defense responses in systemic tissues but also play important roles in the maintenance of the propagation of traveling signals within the plant. The distal organs can respond immediately to the systemic signals or memorize the threat information and respond faster and stronger when they are exposed again to the same or even another threat. Transmission and storage of information is accompanied by loss of specificity about the threat that activated the process. I summarize our knowledge about the proposed long-distance traveling compounds and discuss their possible connections. MDPI 2021-03-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8003533/ /pubmed/33808792 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22063152 Text en © 2021 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Oelmüller, Ralf Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? |
title | Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? |
title_full | Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? |
title_fullStr | Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? |
title_full_unstemmed | Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? |
title_short | Threat at One End of the Plant: What Travels to Inform the Other Parts? |
title_sort | threat at one end of the plant: what travels to inform the other parts? |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8003533/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33808792 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms22063152 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT oelmullerralf threatatoneendoftheplantwhattravelstoinformtheotherparts |