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Livescience_2014 04253.txt

#I Am Groot: Is a Walking, Talking Plant-Person Possible? Lumbering around on his barky limbs sprouting flowers and even dancing in a pot one of the stars of the film Guardians of the Galaxy bizarrely blends the plant and animal kingdoms. Groot a walking talking tree seems to defy nature but how outlandish is the idea of a plant-animal hybrid? Plants that can smell and animals that regenerate show that animal and vegetable kingdoms may not be as far apart as they first appear. Some scientists even say Earth's biology suggests the possibility of thinking plants somewhere in the universe. Here experts tell how Groot-like blending could occur and some reasons it couldn't. Science Fact or Fiction? The Plausibility of 10 Sci-fi Concepts Plant sight plant hearing In the film Groot clearly hears sees feels and talks (albeit only three words I am Groot). While one would be hard-pressed to find a talking vegetable On earth the idea of communicating and sensing plants is not at all outlandish Danny Chamovitz director of the Manna Center for Plant Biosciences at Tel aviv University and author of What a Plant Knows (Scientific American 2012) told Live Science. In fact plants have a much richer more dynamic life than most people give the leafy beings credit for Chamovitz said. We think of plants as un-living because they're unmoving Chamovitz said. The strong scientific evidence is that plants have every sense familiar in animals except hearing. They respond to chemicals with lock -and-key mechanisms that resemble how animals smell. Plants have specific photoreceptors which are proteins that respond to different wavelengths of light. They know when they're being touched Simon Gilroy a professor of botany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told Live Science. Plants also have proprioception or a sense of their location in space Chamovitz said which is why they can tell when they're planted upside-down. Some plants can even hear able to distinguish the vibration patterns made by different chewing caterpillars according to a study detailed this summer in the journal Oecologia Gilroy said. Decades-old claims that plants can hear music however have little to no scientific support he added.)This plant sensing may not seem evident after all plants don't scream in pain or comment on Van gogh's use of color. But senses serve the same function in plants as they do in animals: Plants take in information which travels through the plant body and causes some sort of response Chamovitz said. In Photos: Animals That Mimic Plants The familiar phenomenon of houseplants growing toward the window for example shows how plants sense and respond to light. When part of a plant gets eaten that causes distress chemicals to propagate through the plant which responds with chemical changes to make itself less tasty to the predator Gilroy said. Not only can plants send signals within their own bodies but those signals can also influence other plants. In other words they communicate Chamovitz said. A disease or pest infestation in a neighboring plant sends out chemical signals that cause nearby plants to respond. They can smell when neighbors are said sick Chamovitz. It gives off a chemical so the plant defends itself. Researchers have shown also corn seedlings lean toward sounds with a 220-Hertz frequency the same tune emitted by the plants'roots and chili seedlings grow quicker when they sense a fennel plant is growing nearby. Moving#but slowly Groot does more than just sense and communicate though. He also moves around. This woody best friend to a talking raccoon shifts around on mobile stumps and lifts alien bullies up by their nostrils. Thinking about it the feature that really isn't plantlike about Groot is speed the of the movement Gilroy said. Plants for the most part simply can't move that fast. Animals have squishy cells that can move past one another making muscles feasible Gilroy said. But a hard wall encloses each plant cell and neighboring cells are glued together into a rigid grid. Things like muscles are impossible with how plants are said set up he. Moreover a plant's entire body-plan centers upon staying put so they can maximize photosynthesis with networks of branches and roots. Chamovitz calls rootedness the primary principle of plant biology. Plants do make movements however they just do it by growing Gilroy said. For example they move toward the sunlight by elongating cells on the dark side of the stem. Plants grow through the environment Gilroy said. Due to some clever mechanisms a few notable species buck the rule of the slow-moving plant. The famous Venus flytrap shuts its jaws rapidly by essentially growing them shut Gilroy said. Acid released at the flytrap's hinge softens cell walls and makes them expand quickly. Image Gallery: Carnivorous plants Finally plants have to stay put because movement burns so much energy photosynthesis simply can't power animal-style activity which is why animals eat plants and other animals. To move around like Groot does on screen such a tree creature would have to eat other things too Gilroy said. Stem cells and Groot Despite his (relatively) quick movements Groot still maintains some plantlike characteristics. Capable of unlimited growth and regeneration he grabs an out of reach-reach battery by simply growing taller. His lopped off arms return and there's even a bit in the movie about replanting a Groot cutting. Clearly the movie speeds up such vegetable growth but real-life plants can indeed keep growing in ways animals can't Ed Rayburn an extension specialist and forage agronomist for West virginia University told Live Science. Those plant species capable of unlimited growth can keep going and going for what to humans seems like forever he said. And plants commonly regenerate lost limbs. Those abilities derive from the way plants are structured and their access to stem cells. Arranged in modular body plans plants can grow limbs in different directions and add secondary limbs in a fractal pattern. Animals by contrast grow to a predetermined size and shape and much of that happens in the womb Gilroy said. We cram all our development into as short a time as possible Gilroy said. But since plants can't run and so will inevitably suffer damage they have to keep growing throughout life he said. Plant stem cells are found in meristems small groups of cells that stay perpetually embryonic Gilroy said. Located at stem and root tips these plant stem cells are pluripotent meaning they can develop into any type of plant cell. After injury any plant cell can revert to similar pluripotency. Animals by contrast lack meristems and stem cells are much harder to come by as shown by the difficulties faced by cloning efforts Rayburn said. Some animals do approach plantlike regenerative growth but usually those with simple body plans like the planarian worm Gilroy said. Intelligent plants? Plant communication even has some researchers in the new field of plant neurobiology considering the potential for leafy intelligence. Alien worlds some scientists say could theoretically birth sentient plants. But Chamovitz said such green thinkers would have to change the core trait of plants their rootedness. Animals developed thought because of their searching strategy for finding food he told Forbes. Alien tree-thinkers would have to incorporate movement perhaps with some type of root system that can push itself out of the ground take three steps forward and then re-root he told Forbes. As for creating plant-animal hybrids here On earth that's most likely to happen in a geneticist's lab. It's theoretically possible given the right gene transfers to give people a coating of green photosynthetic skin. To actually make much use of such a feature however people would have to grow a canopy of leaves. Follow Michael Dhar@michaeldhar. Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Live Science c

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