Scientists unlock the secrecy of the response to the trigger of the hair of Venus Flytrap
To trap its prey, Venus Flytrap sends rapid electrical impulses, which are generated in response to touch or constraint. But the molecular identity of the touch sensor has remained clear. Japanese scientists have identified the molecular mechanism that triggers this response and has published their work in a new article in the journal Nature Communications.
As previously indicated, Venus Flytrap attracts its prey with a pleasant fruity perfume. When an insect landed on a sheet, it stimulates the very sensitive trigger hair that line the sheet. When the pressure becomes strong enough to fold these hairs, the plant will close its leaves and tramp the insect inside. Long eyelashes seize and keep the insect in place, a bit like the fingers, while the plant begins to secrete digestive juices. The insect is slowly digested over five to 12 days, after which the trap reopens, releasing the dried ball of the insect in the wind.
In 2016, Rainer Hedrich, biophysicist of Julius-Maximiliens-Universität Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, led the team which discovered that the Venus Flytrap could actually “count” the number of times something of little hair, a capacity that helps the plant to distinguish the presence of prey and a small nut or stone, or even a deceased insistence. The factory detects the first “action potential” but does not stop immediately, waiting for a second ZAP to confirm the presence of real prey, how the trap is closing. But Venus Flytrap does not close and does not produce digestive enzymes to consume the prey until the hair is triggered three times (for a total of five stimuli).
And in 2023, scientists developed a bioelectronic device to better understand the complex signaling mechanism of Venus Flytrap by mapping how these signals spread. They confirmed that the electric signal begins in the sensory hair of the plant, then spreads radially towards the outside without favorite direction. And sometimes the signals were spontaneous, from sensory hair that had not been stimulated.
Bright green
The latter research is an outgrowth of an article 2020 detailing how Japanese authors have genetically modified a Venus Flytrap to obtain important indices on the functioning of the short -term “memory” of the plant. They introduced a gene for a calcium sensor protein called Gcamp6, which shines green each time it binds to calcium. This green fluorescence allowed the team to visually follow changes in calcium concentrations in response to stimulation of the sensitive hair of the plant with a needle. They concluded that wax and decline in calcium concentrations in leaf cells seem to serve as a short -term memory for Flycrap Venus, although precisely how calcium concentrations work with the plant’s electrical network have remained blurred.
