Democracy in plant cells

What is it about?

Cells in living organisms communicate with their neighbours to work cooperatively during growth processes and adaptation to stress. Plants have microchannels connecting adjacent cells to facilitate this communication. We advance a hypothesis that signalling through the microchannels can be driven by a single cell, while an alternative route circumventing these channels exists as a mechanism to "democratise" decision-making and optimise energy use efficiency. The latter can be exploited to discover new genes controlling various plant processes.

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Why is it important?

We propose the hypothesis that plant cells use a specific compartment (extracellular matrix) when "talking" to their neighbours to agree on a course of action after exposure to stress. The implications of this are (a) we can focus on the extracellular matrix to identify stress-regulatory components to better understand plant physiology and (b) that there is striking resemblance between quorum-sensing bacteria and plant cells than previously suspected. The latter opens new avenues of research and biotechnological applications.