Not so for plants. Their roots keep them lingering in stressful situations - sometimes to death.

Now a Texas A&M University researcher has identified a system in a mutant arabidopsis, a type of weed, that signals to its cells to go on hold until stressful situations pass.

The involvement of "ER stress signal pathway" in plant stress adaptation was discovered by Dr. Hisashi Koiwa, assistant professor of horticultural sciences, and colleagues. Koiwa is presenting the finding at the annual meeting of American Society of Plant Biologists this week (July 26-31) in Hawaii. The findings also will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal "The Plant Cell."

"A plant will attempt to regulate itself when stressed by adjusting its cells to the environment before starting to grow again," Koiwa said. "It's as if a plant is saying to itself, 'wait, we're in a drought, let's adjust before we grow anymore.'

"A plant must have a better stress handling technique," he added.

The scientist explained that when a plant is stressed, it has to rest until it adjusts because if plant cells continue to divide under stress, they might "burst." Something signals a plant to pause, he said, but scientists have never fully studied the systems of plants.

His research, funded in part with a National Science Foundation grant through collaboration with Purdue University researchers, describes how the process works in the mutant arabidopsis.

"It's a natural way for the plant to sense stress and signal to adjust," Koiwa said. "The concept is not new, but it had not been fully established prior to this research."

He said researchers now can look closer at the process to see what happens in other plants. In the long term, he said, plant breeders might use this knowledge to breed plants that are more able to adjust
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Contact: Kathleen Phillips
ka-phillips@tamu.edu
979-845-2872
Texas A&M University - Agricultural Communications
30-Jul-2003