Category: Plant Life

It turns out that Roald Dahl’s fantastical notion of plants “screaming” when hurt may not be as fictional as we once thought. In a study published in 2023, researchers revealed that plants do indeed produce ultrasonic popping or clicking sounds in response to stress—sounds that are outside the range of human hearing but may play a role in how plants communicate with their surroundings.

“Even in a quiet field, there are actually sounds that we don’t hear, and those sounds carry information,” said Lilach Hadany, an evolutionary biologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. “There are animals that can hear these sounds, so there is the possibility that a lot of acoustic interaction is occurring.”

Chinese researchers have identified the primary wound signal that triggers regenerative responses in plants, potentially revolutionizing crop genetic transformation efficiency. This discovery offers a significant advancement in agricultural science and plant biology.

Plants, unlike animals, frequently sustain injuries and have evolved remarkable mechanisms to cope with damage. Despite this, the molecular processes underlying wound-induced regenerative responses have long remained elusive. The journal Science highlighted “What controls organ regeneration?” as one of the top 25 questions among 125 major questions for humanity to answer.

In a realm imperceptible to the human eye, plants envelop themselves in a delicate mist of airborne compounds, employing this ethereal language for communication and self-defense. Comparable to scents, these compounds serve to repel hungry herbivores and alert neighboring plants to impending threats. While scientists have recognized these plant defense mechanisms since the 1980s, the process of how plants receive and respond to these aerial alarms has remained a significant gap in our understanding.

Addressing this knowledge gap, a team of Japanese researchers, led by molecular biologists Yuri Aratani and Takuya Uemura from Saitama University, utilized real-time imaging techniques to unravel the mysteries of plant communication. The researchers conducted experiments involving the transfer of compounds emitted by injured and insect-infested plants onto undamaged counterparts, observing the responses using a fluorescence microscope.