New study shows that plants have ”brains” that decide when to sprout
A team of scientists from the University of Birmingham found that a cluster of cells in plant seeds acts like some sort of a brain that triggers the germination, Inhabitat.com reports.
During their study, the researchers worked with a plant called thale cress so as to determine in what degree do plants have structures that are similar to human brains. They managed to locate a group of cells in the seeds that control the decision-making processes and discovered that the group of cells consists of two competing type of cells, with one type promoting germination and another one promoting dormancy.
According to the scientists, this relationship involves hormones being swapped back and forth, in a similar way to mechanisms within the human brain that occur when a person decides whether or not to move. The team added that the mechanism plays a crucial role in vegetation, as premature germination may lead to death due to frost, while germinating too late will lead to complications as a result of wrong climate conditions.
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“Our work reveals a crucial separation between the components within a plant decision-making centre. In the human brain, this separation is thought to introduce a time delay, smoothing out noisy signals from the environment and increasing the accuracy with which we make decisions. The separation of these parts in the seed ‘brain’ also appears to be central to how it functions,” said George Bassel, lead author of the study.
“Our work has important implications for understanding how crops and weeds grow,” said Bassel. “There is now potential to apply this knowledge to commercial plants in order to enhance and synchronise germination, increasing crop yields and decreasing herbicide use,” he concluded.
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