Plants use hormone relay chains to warn their whole body about disease
Bennett F, Stroud E, Kachroo P, Grant M
Plant Signaling
When one tomato in your garden gets hit with blight, the rest of the plant is already quietly raising its defenses, and understanding that chemical alarm network could soon let breeders grow crops that fight back faster without extra spraying.
When a plant gets infected in one spot, it doesn't just fight back there; it sends chemical messages through its whole body so that distant, healthy leaves can brace for the same attack. Scientists used to think this warning system ran mainly on two well-known plant chemicals, but new imaging and single-cell studies show that a third group of hormones called jasmonates kicks the whole process off and helps carry the signal from leaf to leaf. These same jasmonates also seem to help plants 'talk' to their neighbors through the air and even coordinate with soil microbes, meaning a disease outbreak in one plant can quietly put the whole garden on alert.
Key Findings
Jasmonates act as early initiators and likely propagators of long-distance immune signaling, working upstream of the previously recognized key regulators salicylic acid and N-hydroxypipecolic acid.
Single-cell transcriptomics and whole-plant imaging identified specific cell types and spatial-temporal hormone networks that coordinate immune signal generation, movement, and reception across plant tissues.
Jasmonates also coordinate plant-to-plant communication via volatile compounds and the soil microbiome, extending systemic immune priming beyond individual plants to entire plant communities.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Plants under attack don't just defend themselves locally - they send alarm signals throughout their entire body to prepare distant leaves for incoming threats. This review reveals that jasmonates, a family of plant hormones, play a much bigger role in launching and relaying these whole-plant immune alerts than previously recognized.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Systemic acquired resistance: an emerging role for jasmonates in local signal biogenesis, translocation and distal signal decoding.
Plant systemic acquired resistance (SAR) requires generation and movement of mobile signals from local leaves in which plant disease resistance has been activated (effector-triggered immunity, ETI)...
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