UNDERSTANDING THE MECHANISMS OF VIBRATION PERCEPTION BY PLANTS

Plants are not passive bystanders, they sense their surroundings and react to threats through chemical and vibrational cues. A key example of this is when a plant detects volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released by neighboring plants that have been damaged by herbivores. Green leaf volatiles (GLVs), a subset of VOCs released in the atmosphere, are rapidly taken up by the inner tissues of plants via stomata, leading to [Ca2+]cyt increase and subsequent defense responses in Arabidopsis (GCaMP3) leaves. A key question scientists are now investigating is whether plants can use mechanical cues, such as the vibrations caused by herbivores, to activate defense mechanisms in a similar way to chemical communication. Thus, biotremology is a recently defined scientific discipline that studies the vibratory communication behavior through the use of substrate-borne vibrations. This research project aims to investigate the interaction between an herbivore species (L. trifolii ) and plants (Nicotiana tabacum), to investigate calcium signaling activation in response to vibrational cues emitted by chewing larvae. According to preliminary results, we expect that chewing vibrations will trigger a Ca2+ mediated signaling cascade in tobacco plants. These results will be integrated with other data to finalize a scientific publication.

Faculty Supervisor:

Andrew Mason;Keiko Yoshioka

Student:

Partner:

University of Trento

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Toronto

Program: