Flowers use volatile compounds call terpenes to communicate with and protect themselves from the outside man . The aroma produced welcome pollinator while warding off pests and disease .
Now , a Purdue University study shows that petunias use terpenes in a sort of internal communication and to better the plant ’s reproductive capability . Natalia Dudareva , a Purdue distinguished professor in the Department of Biochemistry and lead on the research , published the findings in a paper featured on the concealment of the diary Nature Chemical Biology .
Purdue University ’s Natalia Dudareva and Joseph Lynch , an associate research scientist in Dudareva ’s lab , determined that petunias naturally fumigate themselves , transferring volatile compounds from flower vacuum tube to the brand . The cognitive operation is important for industrial plant defense , health and procreation . ( Purdue Agricultural Communication photo / Tom Campbell )
“ In ecumenical , volatile compound help in flora - to - plant communication and defense , but this is the first clock time we ’ve seen that industrial plant practice these compounds for inter - organ communication and signaling , ” Dudareva said . “ It ’s much a new physiological cognitive process that we ’ve never known before . ”
Dudareva , along with co - source Benoît Boachon , a former research comrade in Dudareva ’s science laboratory , researchers in the labs of Purdue ’s John Morgan and Sharon Kessler , and fellow worker from the University of Salzburg in Austria , record that before a petunia flower opens , the bud play as a sort of fumigation chamber .
A genus Petunia bud that has not open ( top ) will aerially shift volatile compound from the tube of the flower to the mark before opening . The discovery , by Purdue University scientists , is the first electric organ - to - organ communication detected in flower . ( Purdue Agricultural Communication photo / Tom Campbell )
“ We were looking for the occurrence of terpenes in the generative organ of genus Petunia flower , and we observe that these compounds were accumulating in the mark . But the expression of the cistron and the bodily process leading to the biogenesis of these terpene were not happening in the stigma . It was happening in the flower tube , ” Boachon said .
Researchers execute three experimentation to sustain their fumigation surmise – that terpenes present in the stigma were actually generated and emitted from the flower ’s metro and then aerially transmit and afterwards absorbed by the stigma .
First , they grew the blossom bud without the metro and noted that there was significantly less terpene accumulation in the brand . Next , they bestow a recording label to the compounds in the flower underground . later on analysis showed that the labeled compound were found in the stigma .
Finally , they hush up the gene that produce terpene in the bloom tube . The resulting flowers had less terpene accumulation in their mark . The terpene accretion could be restored in stigmas with the cistron silenced simply by placing them in tube with the cistron alive .
Surprisingly , petunias lacking fumigation of terpenes from the flower tube also produced smaller stigmas and about 30 percent fewer seeds . That suggests that controlling terpene production in plants could increase source output , something not consider before this work .
“ Volatile compounds were assumed to be involved in defense and communication , but not in the development operation , ” Dudareva said . “ Now we see they have functions exchangeable to hormone . It could be possible to better generative organs development and increase seed yield . This opens a unexampled field for the study of a physiological process involve these compounds . ”
The National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture supported this research .
Source : Purdue University ( Brian Wallheimer )
