Do plant seeds have a brain?

Plant seeds can use miniature "brains" to help them solve, germinate or stay in a state of inactivity. This is evidenced by a new scientific study.

This seed "brain" does not have a traditional gray matter, like a human being, but it uses the same mechanism for processing information, according to which our hemispheres work. Plants interpret a cascade of signals emanating from hormones to decide when to start germinating.

Plants are like people

"Plants are like people in the sense that they have to think and make decisions, just like us," says study co-author George Bassel, a biologist at the University of Birmingham in England. According to Bassel, people make decisions using small groups of special cells of the nervous system located in the brain.

"Just like a person, there is a very small number of cells inside the sleeping semen, with which certain decisions are made. These cells act in a manner similar to the cells of our nervous system, "Bassel noted in the journal Live Science.

According to the scientist, researchers can once use these ideas to develop seeds that germinate simultaneously each season, as well as to obtain greater protection against changing climatic conditions.

Food for thought

The idea that plants can feel, hear or see, in the scientific world is absolutely not new. Researchers have shown that seedlings grow into the sounds of certain frequencies or accelerate their growth when other competing plant species are nearby. And, according to a study conducted in 2007 (it was described in the journal Oecologia), plants can communicate with each other when they are at risk.

Therefore, according to biologist Bassel, the idea of "thinking" plants is not so far-fetched, as it seems at first glance. One of the proofs that careful processing of information about the environment plays a decisive role for the survival of the plant is the timing of the germination of the seeds.

The role of seeds

Seeds are the only way that a plant can travel over considerable distances, from an unusable environment to a more suitable one. They can travel far, being eaten by animals or carried to the wind. According to Bassel, in this way the plant uses one of the ways of moving in time and space. Basel said that inactive seeds lie in the ground until the temperature or other conditions are in order. They are able to optimize their chances of survival.

Mechanism of plant thinking

To understand how plants make decisions, the scientist and his colleagues have created a digital atlas of each individual cell of the embryos (seeds) of the tala plant or Arabidopsis thaliana. Then the researchers displayed the places in which certain hormones, as a rule, are localized inside the seeds.

They found that two hormones known to play a role in germination, gibberellin (GA) and abscisic acid (ABA), were kept in high concentrations at the tip of the embryonic root.

Of the 3000-4000 cells contained in seeds, approximately 25 to 40, presumably played a dominant role in the treatment of these hormones. One part of the cells produced GA hormones providing a signal for germination, while the other part of the cells, at some distance, produced ABA, a signal that promoted "sleeping". The study showed that hormones were exchanged between signals.

"The use of these two signals provides both growth and stopping," Bassel says in Live Science.

At rest, the cells produce more ABA than GA. And as the conditions outside the seed improve, the level of GA hormones gradually increases until the "decision center" of the seeds starts signaling that it is better to begin to germinate than to remain at rest. This mechanism is described by researchers in scientific work, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Terms of germination

The team of researchers reached an artificial change in the level of activity of hormones in plants. Experience has shown that, by manipulating the levels and timing of the transmission of hormonal signaling, the seeds can control the timing of germination.

"In the seeds of plants, the two opposite centers of the complex of solutions are separated by a certain distance. Similarly, in the motor cortex of the human brain, two separate hemispheres initiate motion or rest, "Bassel said.

"In animals, the separation of these two regions prevents an accidental impulse from forcing the body to make wrong decisions," the scientist stated.

The study proved that in the plant the separation between the regions "growth" and "rest" is intended to make important decisions for their existence that stimulate germination in periods when the ambient temperature is constantly changing. It is not clear why temperature fluctuations should be so important for plants, but one of the reasons is that this process helps plants to feel how deep their roots are in the soil. The deeper they are, the more buffered they are against the temperature changes. "Another feature is that temperature fluctuations are more often observed when changing seasons. Differences can help the seeds to feel the transition periods, "Bassel stated.

The commonality between plants and animals

"The idea of a common structure of the brain of plants and animals is very fascinating, because the representatives of the flora and fauna have clearly evolved from the same anatomical structures," says Bassel. According to the latest scientific study, the common ancestor of plants and animals was a one-chamber algal-like organism that existed 1.6 billion years ago.

According to a scientific discovery published in 2002 in the journal Science, despite this huge evolutionary gap, plants and animals function according to general principles, which gave them some advantage in responding to a changing environment. "Both plants and animals, thanks to evolutionary processes, adapted according to a similar pattern," Bassel said.