How plants fight back

Masatsugu Toyota, have produced a series of videos that shows how plants responded when they subjected them to wounds, including scissor cuts and caterpillar bites. B Gilroy and Toyota discovered that when one part of a plant is attacked or damaged, a wave of calcium spreads throughout the rest of the plant. The calcium alerts the plant to danger and the need to deploy defence tactics. The team were able to see this by utilising a naturally occurring fluorescent-green protein which binds to the calcium, making its path visible. While scientists already knew that plants reacted to danger via an electrical charge that moves across the plant, they didn't know exactly how it happened. Gilroy and Toyota suspected it had something to do with calcium and were able to confirm their suspicions. They were also able to reveal how glutamate — an abundant neurotransmitter in animals — triggers this wave of calcium. C The find was fortuitous given that Gilroy hadn't intended to study wounding at all. His real passion is understanding how plants sense gravity and seem to know which way is up — something that's proving extremely hard to work out. It was during the early stages of an experiment into gravity that Toyota came across the…