Artificial Plant Defensive Mechanism

Plants are very interesting organisms to study. There are many discoveries relating to plants every other day. Today I will be talking about the plant defense mechanism. Naturally, a plant produces enzymes that protect them against any antigens in their system but these enzymes sometimes may not be convenient especially when the plant has been damaged by pests.







To prevent the inconvenience of plant defensive mechanism, scientists are currently working on engineering plants that they will have an artificial defensive mechanism which will be triggered by the plant stress hormone jasmonate incase of any tissue damage.
By developing this articial mechanism, it will be effective for preventing any form of tissue damage and thus plant productivity will increase. This will then ascertain the world that even with the increasing population, plant food production will be able to sustain the world.

Campos ML, Yoshida Y, Major IT, de Oliveira Ferreira D, Weraduwage SM, Froehlich JE, Johnson BF, Kramer D, Jander G, Sharkey TD, Howe GA (2016) Rewiring of jasmonate and phytochrome B signaling uncouples plant growth-defense tradeoffs. Nature Communications, 7, 12570

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12570

Expery.