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Plants are thirsty for water, just like us animals, but exactly how they suck it in through their tissues has remained a bit of a mystery, as trying to see it happen alters the process.
Applying a gentle imaging technique in a new way, University of Nottingham physicist Flavius Pascut and the team were able to observe the innards of plants at work as they drank in real time.
“We have developed a way to allow us to monitor this process at the individual cell level,” said Kevin Webb, an electrophysiologist at the University of Nottingham. “We can not only see the water rising inside the root, but also where and how it moves.”
Not only is water itself essential for plants, but it also acts as a vehicle for the transport of other important nutrients, minerals and biomolecules in living structures. The efficiency with which plants are able to move the precious liquid can have a huge effect on their ability to tolerate harsh environmental conditions.
“To observe the uptake of water by living plants without damaging them, we applied a laser-sensitive light microscopy technique to see the movement of water inside living roots non-invasively, which has never been done before, ”explained Webb.
By detecting how light photons scatter from a narrow laser source, Raman microspectroscopy provides real-time molecular-level imaging under natural conditions without the need for molecular labeling.
This technique is so sensitive that it can detect the mass and orientation of molecular bonds. This means that contrast can be provided by using molecules that stand out from their surroundings – in this case, deuterium oxide, known as heavy water, in place of normal water. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen that has one neutron as well as the usual lone proton of normal hydrogen, doubling its mass.
Although heavy water has slightly different properties, it is similar enough to normal water that it does not physiologically change things in small amounts.
The scan detected a heavy water pulse within 80 seconds of exposure of the roots of the researchers’ most studied plant, thale watercress (Arabidopsis thaliana). Pascut and the team alternated between exposing the flowering plant to normal water and heavy water to observe how the new water moved through the plant’s tissues.
Oddly enough, the researchers only detected the water sucked in from the inner part of the roots, where the water transporting the xylem from the root tissues occurs, showing that this initial water uptake is not shared with the surrounding tissues. as it ascends from the roots to the rest of the plant.
Researchers believe this means that there are “two aquatic worlds” within the plant and that the second water delivery system distributes water to these external tissues.
Being able to observe this process will help us understand it and better plan crops for the tumultuous future we face.
“The goal is to increase global food productivity by understanding and using varieties of plants with the best chance of survival that can be the most productive in any given environment, no matter how wet or dry it is. “said Webb.
Pascut and the team are developing a portable version of the imaging technology to allow for more accessible field studies, and they also believe the technique could be used in healthcare monitoring devices, although our cells are many. smaller than those of plants.
For now, however, “this promises to help us answer important questions such as – how do plants ‘sense’ the availability of water? University of Nottingham plant scientist Malcolm Bennett explained.
“The answers to this question are vital to designing future crops better suited to the challenges we face with climate change and altered weather conditions.”
This research was published in Nature Communication.
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