When they're being eaten, bean plants release chemicals that draw in parasitic wasps.
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Beans use an immune receptor to call in airstrikes on caterpillars
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For the last two months, I taught a high school course in biology (finished last week). I started noticing articles like this, and incorporated them as short "biology in the news" slides. I wish this paper had come out a couple weeks sooner, as it brought together lots of topics we had discussed: genes, defective proteins, back-crosses, etc. Anyway, nice!
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We definitely don't give plants the respect they deserve. Never forget that you can cut a tree down completely and the stump can survive for something like up to ten years, because other nearby trees will share vital nutrients via their root systems.
What does this mean, boys and girls? It means that even trees have better social support systems/healthcare than the average American.
What does this mean, boys and girls? It means that even trees have better social support systems/healthcare than the average American.
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I can't decide which is more amazing, the ability of the plants to detect being eaten by caterpillars and summon wasps to eat them, or the patience of the researchers to spend several years setting up and then running this experiment. Great article!
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I didn't understand how ginormous caterpillars indicate deterrence by the plant. They get too heavy to stay upright on a leaf maybe? It actually seems the opposite; 'fat pillars are not-deterred 'pillars. Misprint?
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"
I enjoy the careful and gradual the balance that comes from co-evolution of various species. "Move fast and break things" offers a quick hit, but includes unintended destructive consequences. "Go slow and grow things" is not flashy, but it is somewhat beautiful.
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I wonder how many of these kinds of interactions have been lost in the current mass extinction event.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
in other news, tomato seeds pass through the most hostile acidic process to then make it into fecal dump. Worker at sewer plant tells me of dozens of tomato plants growing there. I don't think I would eat them though...
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That's the dude who brings gazpacho to the neighborhood potluck.
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I have a great fondness for any research / learning that expands our understanding of what life is capable of. Even if this general principle is something long-known (I can't remember how long ago I learned about acacia trees signalling each other, but it was at some point decades ago), finding more specifics delights me.
So much is going on beyond what we can plainly see. I suppose that's the heart of it.
So much is going on beyond what we can plainly see. I suppose that's the heart of it.
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So ultimately this would allow us to introduce wasps to eat the caterpillars. Would we then need to introduce something to eat the wasps? And then...
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Actually, grafted root systems are a myth, promoted mainly by Suzanne Simard, with recent criticisms based on lack of actual evidence and a good dollop of anthropomorphism. She's done good work on forest ecology, but this particular claim is off the rails.
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Nora Lenderbee
Ars Tribunus Militum
Some trees seem to signal each other in other ways as well. Here's an interesting little digression into the subject of Crown Shyness.
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I won't proclaim to be a biologist, because I most definitely am not, but from my own nerding out, recently watching a bunch of mycology documentaries, it's not so much that the root systems themselves are grafted or physically connected, but that an entire ecosystem of fungal roots and what-not share nutrients from root system to root system in a rather impressive display of symbiosis.
My expertise is fire life safety, so YMMV in the above, but it certainly made sense to me (and was pretty cool to learn, to boot)
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I think that's saying that the In11-less beans still have some defences against the caterpillars, because if you knock out all of the immune defences the caterpillars get even bigger.
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Not a misprint. You missed this part: "if you knock out [destroy]" the whole immune system, then the caterpillars grow enormously fat. In other words, caterpillars eat a lot more when they're on plants without immune systems. Ergo, plant immune systems cause caterpillars to eat less. That's a separate effect from anything to do with wasps. Somehow the immune system is triggering the plants to be less tasty, or less digestible, or less nutritious, or harder to chew, or toxic, or appetite-suppressing, or something like that. (Or all of the above?)
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I'm familiar with the concept, it's just that there isn't any actual evidence supporting it.
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There are trees that can grow back from a stump.
https://fortcollinstreecare.com/can-trees-grow-back-from-stumps/
However in the wild it is extremely rare.
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Such a cool study. And I wonder if they were thinking at the start that they'd have to go all Gregor Mendel for a while and plant a bunch of generations to get their necessary pairs of plants for testing.
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Suckering is pretty common. Even American Chestnuts laid low by blight over a century ago still send up suckers; they eventually succumb to the blight themselves after a few years, but they're the basis for several efforts hoping for a somatic mutation with resistance. Same is true for many other trees.
See also: coppicing, the practice of cutting down mature trees to rejuvenate them.
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I mean, aren't there some coffee beans that are brewed specifically after certain primates eat and then pass them?
How much worse could tomatoes be?
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Some parasitic wasps have parasites of their own: hyperparasites / meta parasites. I don't know anything other than they exist. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperparasite
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That fact that a plant uses its own molecules for this signaling is pretty neat. I imagine evolution had a couple of options, including molecules specific to caterpillar saliva, or caterpillars of a very specific species. Using your own molecules is really generic and can set up pathways for other types of response to being eaten or physical damage. My stoner question is, did beans "try" other molecules before settling on In11? When is it worth it to go species specific detection.
Also how do I tell my carnivorous plants about this trick? Yes, it is ironic that my plant easting bugs are being eaten by bugs.
Also how do I tell my carnivorous plants about this trick? Yes, it is ironic that my plant easting bugs are being eaten by bugs.
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I tried that once. Can you believe it was cold? I called over the chef and told him to take it away and bring it back hot.
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I don't think the general public realizes just how much effort goes into seemingly simple research results, especially in biology-related fields.
A simple-seeming "we found a gene that seems to do x" like this one is often the result of several years of work by several people. A result like this may be the entire PhD thesis for a grad student.
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I suspect we've all had the experience of an airstrike subsequent to burrito consumption.
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You've got a bit of a consonant on your forehead there, Rimmer.
On topic: So time bore out that beans/wasps decided upon the In11 triggered signal. What changes to the wasps were necessary to be sensitive to this type of signal? Is this a common airborne signal molecule in the plant/hymenoptera relay network?
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One thing that makes this research interesting to me is the use of accumulated mutations in standing breeding populations to test the gene. It takes a long time to make knock out edit in plants, but no one has successfully edited common bean. A bunch of folks have tried- but currently there is no transformation and regeneration.
In domestication, people do selection over time- in common beans case there are dual domestications meso and Andean. Eventually the pools come back together some in modern times. Since common bean has a continual domestication over the past 10k years there are frequent introgressions from “wild” cultivars and some accumulated mutations per generation. People primarily selected on seed size, yield and flavor. So the ln11 deletion (mutation) wasn’t important in one growing region and for whatever reason they liked those beans and maintained them which provided the genotype used here. We would consider this a deleterious mutation in modern germplasm - you can tell by it mostly not being around anymore - so the wasp connection was really important in the wild and likely during early domestication. The other way to test this would be to make mutations using chemical mutagenesis or radiation to try to knock the gene out, some of this has been done in common bean, but to my knowledge there is not a comprehensive knock out library to just find, and order up the mutants and do the experiment as we would do in other crops.
If you haven’t tried a range of beans you are missing out on some amazing flavors - rancho Gordo is the best place to get ahold of quality heirloom beans in the US. I’m partials to the pinks myself.
Thanks for a great article!
In domestication, people do selection over time- in common beans case there are dual domestications meso and Andean. Eventually the pools come back together some in modern times. Since common bean has a continual domestication over the past 10k years there are frequent introgressions from “wild” cultivars and some accumulated mutations per generation. People primarily selected on seed size, yield and flavor. So the ln11 deletion (mutation) wasn’t important in one growing region and for whatever reason they liked those beans and maintained them which provided the genotype used here. We would consider this a deleterious mutation in modern germplasm - you can tell by it mostly not being around anymore - so the wasp connection was really important in the wild and likely during early domestication. The other way to test this would be to make mutations using chemical mutagenesis or radiation to try to knock the gene out, some of this has been done in common bean, but to my knowledge there is not a comprehensive knock out library to just find, and order up the mutants and do the experiment as we would do in other crops.
If you haven’t tried a range of beans you are missing out on some amazing flavors - rancho Gordo is the best place to get ahold of quality heirloom beans in the US. I’m partials to the pinks myself.
Thanks for a great article!
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The wasps aren't sensing ln11. They're sensing volatile organics emitted by the plants. Exactly which ones is a separate research question. The article mentions ethylene, which is a ripening signal in many fruits - so it's probably ancestral to flowering plants. Oooh, quick lookup suggests it's probably much older than that, seems very simlar to something found in cyanobacteria. Anyway, ethylene woudl be a no-brainer for most wasps: ripe fruit are yummy. Ethylene also plays a role in apoptosis (not unrelated to ripening - over-ripening; and maybe a reasonable response to caterpillar attack: kill the neighboring cells so the caterpillar gets a mouthful of rotting mush with extra nasty enzymes). But I would not be at all surprised to learn that plants emit a large variety of gases during caterpillar attack, and the precise cocktail will distinguish between a caterpillar attack and some other herbivore. (A wasp wouldn't be too interested in deer or rabbits...) Info about the plant species would also be useful to a wasp, and maybe the plant can even recognize and signal what species of caterpillar it is. (Maybe not -- ln11 woudn't tell them that.)
Yes, the wasp and the plant would have to co-evolve for the wasp to be able to read the signal, but that's not a huge stretch. The basic "plant in distress" signal has probably been around for longer than insects have existed, so there's been plenty of time to evolve refinements.
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For sure, fungal networks exist and exchange nutrients with trees. I think the controversy is whether there is a web of networks that acts to support species within a forest and enables exchange between neighbor trees in a kind of altruistic behavior (talking trees). The answer is not cut and dried. Forest ecosystems are complicated exchanges of nutrients, water and access to sunlight. Underground is more complicated than above ground. Suzanne Simards work showed that carbon can be exchanged between species - however this isn’t necessarily a coordinated sharing activity. Trees release carbon into soil, others pick it up - was there communication? Maybe. But not settled yet. Is there some mutualism in the forest? For sure. Is it so ubiquitous to suggest a common interface between trees that help to share out nutrients? Seems an unlikely extrapolation.
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Which ones? There are four or five varieties of what could be called "pinks" I can think of. Sedonas, o'odhams, pinquitos...
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And yet I have seen stumps which have completely sealed over on the top. More studies needed.
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Can we get it to work with any picked veg and then serve it up at the next banquet for politicians? Would be interesting to see the security agents trying to shoot the wasps. That’s some genetic engineering I could get behind… though I suppose the most annoying ones don’t seem to touch healthy food..
… hmmm I wonder if can we get it to work with burgers
… hmmm I wonder if can we get it to work with burgers
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