Serious: this is a fascinating discovery that could have enormous implications for agriculture. Being able to command a plant to perform actions on cue could let us optimize growth.
Silly: the researcher’s last name is Assmann lol.
Really curious about what this leads to. We also know that plants can signal each other via the mycelium, they have awareness of their surroundings and events, just not in the same way we do.
We know a lot more about plant metabolism including hormone signalling and various different metabolic pathways and strategies. It just isn’t common knowledge to people outside of plant science. So this is less of a new field to research, but rather something new that science communication has been exploring the last few years.
Very cool research. I was one of the few who seemed to like studying the plant module at university, so I’m having fun learning about this new development.
Unrelated to that, I gotta give props to one of the researchers quoted heavily in the linked article, Sarah Assmann, for how well she’s playing the grant game:
"We identified hundreds of metabolites in apoplastic fluid, which no one had analyzed to this extent before,” Assmann said. “That, on its own, is an important contribution to the field, independent of the research question that we specifically were addressing, because it gives a lot of leads on other potential signaling molecules for processes throughout the plant.”
Like, that is an expertly crafted statement in terms of bigging up the significance of your research in a manner that is honest, but strategic in terms of future grant money. I feel like I’m surrounded by researchers who are either doing awesome research that they’re terrible at pitching, or people whose projects are meh, but they turn the bullshit up to 11. These guys are playing the game well though
Hm, I feel like this study does actually fall into the latter “meh” category. Sure, it is great to have the information what molecules in particular control the stomata to open and close. But we do already have so much knowledge of the intricacies of plant metabolism that this is yet just another tiny puzzle piece in the grand scheme of things. So they try to sell their research here as leading to much more open research questions, but I doubt that they actually found any actually new compounds that no one has ever found before.
Sarah Assmann
We truly do live in an unprecedented age of gender equality.
Ok, I’m done being 5 now
So I can roid up my cabbage?
