Zombie Plants Help To Spread Bacterial Pathogen

bmahersciwriter writes: "We've all heard stories about how parasites can 'zombify' organisms, getting them to mindlessly protect a brood or infect their peers. Now UK researchers have figured out how one bacterial pathogen co-opts the behavior of a plant, causing it to attract sap-sucking insects that help the bacteria spread to other plants. From the story in Nature News: 'The plant appears alive, but it's only there for the good of the pathogen,' says plant pathologist Saskia Hogenhout from the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK. 'In an evolutionary sense, the plant is dead and will not produce offspring.' 'Many might balk at the concept of a zombie plant because the idea of plants behaving is strange,' says David Hughes, a parasitologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. 'But they do, and since they do, why wouldn't parasites have evolved to take over their behavior, as they do for ants and crickets?'"

Comments

what's next? Zombie Rocks?

[turkeydance]

oh, yeah. pet rocks. sorry.

Cold/Flu makes us zombies?

[AaronLS]

The cold/flu causes us to produce additional muccus/sneeze/cough, altering our behavior which increases transmission rates. This doesn't mean we are zombies. I think it's a very interesting find, but a little ridiculous to involve the term zombie.

Re:Cold/Flu makes us zombies?

[viperidaenz]

That's a immune system response, not common to any particular pathogen. Along with increased body temperature.
The extra snot in your nose contains virophages that actually attack other viruses before entering your body.

In this case the bacteria makes the plant turn its flowers into leaves. Making the plant sterile but attracting the insect vectors it needs to spread. One of the key parts of the definition of life has been removed - the ability to reproduce.

Re:Cold/Flu makes us zombies?

[antifoidulus]

Rabies might be a better example. It's not a coincidence that animals infected with rabies are more likely to engage in behaviors that spread rabies than they were before infection. So bacteria like the one in question are hardly unique.

Re:Cold/Flu makes us zombies?

[Harlequin80]

Similar analogy can be applied to virus infected computers which are often referred to as zombies. All they are doing, once infected, is trying to spread the infection. Depending on how aggressive the virus is the computer will become incapable of doing anything else. Which seems like a fair description of zombie behaviour.

Re:Cold/Flu makes us zombies?

[userw014]

The presumption of the article is that Zombies cause their host to permanently be no longer capable of reproduction, which the article mentions. That aspect of Zombiness is usually implicit (body parts falling off, etc.) in most Zombie stories. I certainly haven't heard of any stories where Zombie hosts are capable of reproduction, although the BBC series about cured Zombies seemed may have touched on that topic.

Zombie plants?

[ArcadeMan]

Or Plants vs Zombies?

Relax people

[The Grim Reefer]

I have it on good word from The Umbrella Corporation... Ahem... Monsanto, that there is nothing to worry about. This bacteria could in no way affect their GMO products. Nor did they have any involvement in it's creation. The reports of carnivorous plants attacking independent farmers and their families are simply not true. Their fields and homes were torched, ahem, sterilized simply as a safety precaution.

If you can't beat em, join em.

[T.E.D.]

Sensible. After getting thousands and thousands of zombies taken out by those damn plants, the sensible thing to do would be to subvert them from the inside.

Yes, now there are truly zombies on your lawn.