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A Plant That Can Smell
BlueCup writes "The question of how a dodder finds a host plant has puzzled researchers. Many thought it simply grew in a random direction, with discovery of a plant to attack being a chance encounter. But the researchers led by Consuelo M. De Moraes found that if they placed tomato plants near a germinating dodder, the parasite headed for the tomato 80 percent of the time. And when they put scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73 percent of the dodder seedlings headed that way. Turns out, it sniffs out it's prey."
But the researchers led by Consuelo M. De Moraes found that if they placed tomato plants near a germinating dodder, the parasite headed for the tomato 80 percent of the time. And when they put scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73 percent of the dodder seedlings headed that way. Turns out, it sniffs out it's prey.
See, now I would have thought that it would have been the tomatoes that made the first strike...
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
its more likely the plants are using the force... i'm not kidding man!!! Have you seen the size of the midichlorians on tomatoes??? I'd want to get close to them too!
A dodder is also known as a Cuscuta.
Be relentless!
YOUFAILIT!
Somehow I think that plant pathologists have probably noticed this for decades. It a pretty useful lab plant for moving pathogens between plants in interesting ways. Dodder is grown in plant path greenhouses commonly and usually near host plants.
I can't find anything on google about it, but there was a tale of an experiment where a man went into a greenhouse and hacked up all the plants.
A bunch of scientific equipment was setup to measure plants behaviour/electrical impulses.
They then had 10 people walk through the room and when the man who hacked the plants entered the room the plants sent off strong/furious signals.
I always wondered if this was a true experiment or urban legend...but with this species of plants sensing different kinds of chemicals, it just might have been real.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
My dodder has no nose.
How does it smell?
Terrible!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
A bass guitar in spider webs / Longing for the funk
Uzi gun takes its place / in a wagon trunk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafflesia
:)
That is how I interpreted the title.
Nothing new here, as apparently, this one smells quite a lot.
...you don't smell the plants, the plants smell you.
If the genetic engineering wizards could find out how to transplant this characteristic to, say, aquatic plants, perhaps they could modify them to attack the destructive zebra mussels that are such a major problem in the Great Lakes, or to control problem plants such as hydrilla verticillata.
It's an fun thought, even if I lack the background to evaluate its feasibility.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
I was hiking with my parents in the Shining Rock Wildnerness, an area in western North Carolina. Part of the wilderness was burned out sometime in the 1920's and the burn formed a long lasting grassland along several peaks. We hiked it sometime in the early 90's and it was the first time I saw dodder. It was this strange mat of oranged colored leafless vines, much like this growing on a particularly plant (very similar to what is in the photograph, I believe). The strange thing is that we had hiked this trail over many years and had never seen this before. So we wondered at first if it were some new invasive species from elsewhere. Turns out that this was native to the area, but for whatever reason it never had grown this prolifically before. Definitely one of the strangest plants I've ever run across.
Turns out, it sniffs out it's prey
Yes, but can it sniff out the difference between "it's" (it is) and "its" (the thing that belongs to it)? Come on, now, it's just one stinking paragraph to edit!
That being said, I've often observed, in the jungle-like Maryland suburbs, the seemingly impossible reach and accuracy of certain smothering, viney plants. The twisty, strangling, inescapable spread of warm, fuzzy-looking faux-friendliness - it's amazing. And that's just the PTA members! You should see the Kudzu!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
First you have the so called animal rights nutjobs that want everyone to stop eating meat, next we're going to have plant right whacks that want to ban us from eating plants.
What the hell is left to eat? If it isn't organic, the granola crowd isn't going to bite, and if it's manufactured (genetically engineered), we'll have activists spouting the dangers of modified DNA.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
lol mod up
The Flying Speghetti Monster is seeking out holy tomato sauce! I believe I belieeeeeve!
Table-ized A.I.
Asparagus is a plant.
Therefore plants smell!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Smell is not just chemoattraction. Plants also grow in the direction of sunlight, does that mean they can see? They grow away from gravity, does that mean they can feel?
Um, wouldn't this be "while my guitar gently creeps"?
Table-ized A.I.
And when they put scent chemicals from a tomato on rubber, 73 percent of the dodder seedlings headed that way.
Maybe the dodder seedlings just needed a rubber before approaching the tomato plants?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=6160709
The Acacia tree is sensitive to chemicals given off by other Acacia trees when they are damaged. It responds by increasing it's Tannin production in order to help ward off possible predators. I'm not sure of what the scientific definition of smell is, but I'd probably define it as "the ability to sense the existance of airborne chemicals".
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
Even *single-cell* flagellates have what can be considered a rusimentary sense of smell, and the capability of changing their locomotion in order to lead them to food. That sort of ability is present all the way up through the multicellular ladder, and "smell" (or response to airborne chemical signals) have been well-known for quite some time in plants.
Frankly, I'm susprised that they didn't start out with an assumption that smell was involved.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Smell isn't anything more than detecting fairly dilute chemicals
in the air. The fact that some species of plant have evolved to
perform very specific kinds of chemical detection to ensure their
survival doesn't seem surprising to me. Plants grow towards the
light - why not towards other things that are essential for their
survival.
They don't mention what their sample size is, i.e., is it 100 plants?
I can toss a coin 4 times, and let's say I get tails 3 times. Simultaneously, if I was tossing another coin nearby, and happen to get 3 tails out of 4 again on it too, can I conclude that the second coin supernaturally knew what the result on the other one was? BTW, the probability that the above happens is 1/16. Also, I can repeat this experiment many times to get this case.
Obviously, those researchers are smart enough. My question is: how can they write such a big article without mentioning about the sample size?
That is a strange and complex plant. There are really some fascinating plants out there though... though I have to admit that is in the top ten that I know of.
Now if only we can genetically modify them to attack other Dodder plants.
Justin - Don't be afraid of my blog, it won't bite.
It would seem that 7% of them had a stuffed nose at the time of the 2nd test...
Plenty of plants smell, especially those of the flowering variety. Amazing what you find when you go outside every once in a while.
I kid, I kid...
I got dodder in my garden from a basil plant I bought at a local nursery. That is one vicious weed. It's a parasitic rootless vine, hard to imagine if you've never seen it.
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
"its pray", not "it's pray" or "it is pray".
I have a dog with no nose!
-How does it smell?
Terrible!
Hmmm, nice that the article doesn't mention the actual author of the paper (published in Science). Also not surprisingly, the actual paper doesn't talk about 'smell'. Oh and for the person going on about sample size, of course the paper gives sample sizes.
6 4.pdf
Here's the abstract:
Volatile Chemical Cues Guide Host Location and Host Selection by Parasitic Plants
Justin B. Runyon, Mark C. Mescher, Consuelo M. De Moraes*
The importance of plant volatiles in mediating interactions between plant species is much debated. Here, we demonstrate that the parasitic plant Cuscuta pentagona (dodder) uses volatile cues for host location. Cuscuta pentagona seedlings exhibit directed growth toward nearby tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum) and toward extracted tomato-plant volatiles presented in the absence of other cues. Impatiens (Impatiens wallerana) and wheat plants (Triticum aestivum) also elicit directed growth. Moreover, seedlings can distinguish tomato and wheat volatiles and preferentially grow toward the former. Several individual compounds from tomato and wheat elicit directed growth by C. pentagona, whereas one compound from wheat is repellent. These findings provide compelling evidence that volatiles mediate important ecological interactions among plant species.
And here's the actual paper for those with access to Science articles:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/313/5795/19
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
Technology Quarterly
::: yfnET
A meaty question
Sep 21st 2006
From The Economist print edition
Biotechnology: Meat grown in vats, rather than in the form of animals, could soon be on the menu. It might even be healthier and better for you
IMAGE
IF YOU have ever longed for a meat substitute that smelt and tasted like the real thing, but did not involve killing an animal, then your order could be ready soon. Researchers believe it will soon be possible to grow cultured meat in quantities large enough to offer the meat industry an alternative source of supply.
Growing muscle cells (the main component of meat) in a nutrient broth is easy. The difficulty is persuading those cells to form something that resembles real meat. Paul Kosnik, the head of engineering at a firm called Tissue Genesis, is hoping to do it by stretching the cells with mechanical anchors. This encourages them to form small bundles surrounded by connective tissue, an arrangement similar to real muscle.
Robert Dennis, a biomedical engineer at the University of North Carolina, believes the secret of growing healthy muscle tissue in a laboratory is to understand how it interacts with its surroundings. In nature, tissues exist as elements in a larger system and they depend on other tissues for their survival. Without appropriate stimuli from their neighbours they degenerate. Dr Dennis and his team have been working on these neighbourly interactions for the past three years and report some success in engineering two of the most important—those between muscles and tendons, and muscles and nerves.
At the Touro College School of Health Sciences in New York, Morris Benjaminson and his team are working on removing living tissue from fish, and then growing it in culture. This approach has the advantage that the tissue has a functioning system of blood vessels to deliver nutrients, so it should be possible to grow tissue cultures more than a millimetre thick—the current limit.
Henk Haagsman, a meat scientist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, is trying to make minced pork from cultured stem cells with the backing of Stegeman, a sausage company. It could be used in sausages, burgers and sauces.
But why would anyone want to eat cultured meat, rather than something freshly slaughtered and just off the bone? One answer, to mix metaphors, is that it would allow vegetarians to have their meatloaf and eat it too. But the sausage-meat project suggests another reason: hygiene. As Ingrid Newkirk of PETA, an animal-rights group, puts it, “no one who considers what’s in a meat hot dog could genuinely express any revulsion at eating a clean cloned meat product.”
Cultured meat could be grown in sterile conditions, avoiding Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter and other nasties. It could also be made healthier by adjusting its composition—introducing heart-friendly omega-3 fatty acids, for example. You could even take a cell from an endangered animal and, without threatening its extinction, make meat from it. Giant-panda steak, anyone?
There must be something wrong with these people. It doesn't seem to matter how often they see "its" and "it's" used correctly, they don't learn. I would find it difficult to be so dense; but then again, I'm not stupid.
I'd have thought that smelling means that the plant has sophisticated analytical abilities. Surely calling this "smelling" is like saying that plants that follow the sun are "seeing".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Person 1: My Amorphophallus titanum has no nose!
Person 2: How does it smell?
Person 3: Fucking awful.
Task Mangler
... nothing to smell for you here, please move along...
Ummm, yeah, for decades they have noticed and made use of the host finding behaviour of the dodder.
1. And assumed the dodders behaviour was explained by "random twisting".
2. This experiment found that "random twisting" can not explain the dodders behaviour.
3. Iff the experiment can be repeated, the assumption is broken. Science will look for a stronger explaination as to how the dodder finds a host.
4. RTFA before "arse spraying" it with that boiling alkaline excretion of yours.
5. ????
6. Profit!
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
One question I've never thought of before..
People and organisms are able to navigate by smell. But surely the molecules are fairly widely dispersed in the air? If we're talking about a couple of 'tomato molecules' wouldn't they equally well hit a microorganism from the side as from the front?
not news.
we already know that plants can smell from Thomas Boller
Plants react to stimuli - that's well-known. They grow in the direction of light, the fruits ripen when there is ethylene in the air. Hell - you even have insect-trapping plants..
:)
So, if there are unique chemicals that the prey species give off, there is no surprise the doddler can detect them and react to them. Cool that scientists did the study and found this example, though
Stop the brainwash
We got to greet these new tomato overlords ... bow//euh//crawl to them!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
There is no charge for this editing service.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A plant with a sense of smell? Seems to me that there's a vegetable running the whitehouse (some would say a whole garden full of them), so I don't see how this is so impressive.
/ducks
I guess this means I shouldn't fart on them anymore.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The true question is can we prevent a dodder from attacking a plant by placing smelly socks between them?
Ok flame-proof suit on, but "it's" is short for either "it is" or "it has". In this case the apostrophe isn't needed to denote ownership any more than you need an apostrophe in the words 'his' or 'hers'. More info at the Apostrophe Protection Society.
GodboltBlog
The shocking revelation is that 7% of the dodders weren't fooled by the simulated tomato smell. Those dodders are seeing the fake tomato patches as a trick. Those are the dodders to watch.
--
make install -not war
they kept at least 50' away from the skunk cabbage.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
about plants that smell