Calcium Found to be Involved in Rapid Plant Cell Communication

Botany Professor Simon Gilroy and his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison showed in their recent study what has eluded scientists for a long time: calcium is involved in rapid plant cell communication. Gilroy and his team found about it by accident when they used a calcium sensor as a control in their studies.

The team found that the sensor's brightness changes when calcium is present, and this is displayed on screen as a change from green to red through a process known as fluorescence resonance energy transfer, or FRET. When researchers applied stress to the tip of a plant's roots by placing high concentration of sodium chloride salt, a wave of red that travelled rapidly from the root to the top of the plant was triggered. The calcium wave travelled on a scale of milliseconds, traversing about eight plant cells per second. Within 10 minutes of applying a small amount of salt to the plants' roots, typical stress response genes were turned on in the plant.

The results of this study is in the March 24, 2014 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To read more about this research, read the news release at: http://www.news.wisc.edu/22697.