After injury, plants make a trade-off between repairing damaged tissue and ramping up their defenses, according to a new study. Understanding how plants regulate these responses enabled the researchers to nudge wounded plants toward repair instead of defense, a strategy that could be useful in improving regeneration in important staple crops like corn.

Understanding how plants regulate these responses enabled the researchers to nudge wounded plants toward repair instead of defense, a strategy that could be useful in improving regeneration in important staple crops like corn.

Under attack? Plants «fight or fix»

Plants are subject to a wide array of attacks and injuries, from caterpillars and rabbits munching on their leaves to grubs or fungi attacking their roots.

«Plants can hardly go a few days without some kind of injury. As a result, they have developed sophisticated strategies to respond,» said Kenneth Birnbaum, a professor in NYU’s Department of Biology and Center for Genomics and Systems Biology and the study’s senior author.

Unlike animals, who employ «fight or flight» responses when attacked, plants can’t run. Instead, injury triggers a «fight or fix» response in plants, prompting them to either regenerate their damaged or missing parts or defend themselves. Plants defend themselves by rapidly producing compounds designed to stop an animal or pathogen from further attacks (these secondary compounds have proven to be particularly useful in medicine, giving us drugs like morphine, paclitaxel, and colchicine).

Story Source:
Materials provided by New York University. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.