Author : Claire Thelen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 30 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (119 download)
Book Synopsis Effects of Plant-plant Airborne Interactions on Performance of Neighboring Plants Using Wild Types and Genetically Modified Lines of Arabidopsis Thaliana by : Claire Thelen
Download or read book Effects of Plant-plant Airborne Interactions on Performance of Neighboring Plants Using Wild Types and Genetically Modified Lines of Arabidopsis Thaliana written by Claire Thelen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding plant-plant communication further elucidates how plants interact with their en-vironment, and how this communication can be manipulated for agricultural and ecological purposes. Part of understanding plant-plant communication is discovering the mechanisms behind plant-plant recognition, and whether plants can distinguish between genetically like and unlike neighbors. It has been previously shown that plants can "communicate" with neighboring plants through airborne volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can act as signals related to different environmental stressors.This study focused on the interaction among different genotypes of the annual plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Specifically, a growth chamber experiment was performed to compare how different genotypes of neighboring plants impacted a focal plant's fitness-related phenotypes and developmental stages. The focal plant genotype was wild type Col-0, and the neighboring genotypes included the wild type Landsberg (Ler-0), and the genetically modified (GM) geno-types: Etr1-1 and Jar1-1. These GM lines have a single point-mutation that impacts their ability to produce a particular VOC. This allows for the evaluation of a particular role that a VOC may have on plant-plant airborne communication. Plants were grown in separate pots to eliminate potential belowground interactions through the roots, and distantly positioned to avoid aboveground physical contact between plants. In addition, to avoid potential VOC cross-contamination between different treatments (genotypes), each neighboring plant treatment oc-curred in separate, sealed growth chambers.Results showed that when A. thaliana Col-0 plants were grown alongside neighbors of different genotypes, they exhibited some significant differences in fitness-related traits, such as increased rosette width, stem height, aboveground biomass, and total fruit number. However, these results differed with neighbor identity, and when the experiment was repeated. Arabidopsis thaliana also experienced developmental delays in bolting and flowering time, when exposed to neighbors having a mutation in their ethylene receptors (Etr1-1), but not from any other genotypes.These results indicate that Arabidopsis thaliana is capable of differentiating neighbor identities through airborne VOCs. Since all mutations caused some significant changes to A. thaliana's growth, it is likely that A. thaliana is sensitive to multiple changes in VOC signatures. However, there was high variability between replications, and some phenotypes did not experience expected changes based on previous studies. Therefore, more studies should be performed to discover the effects of different VOCs on plant-plant communication via airborne volatiles.