Abstract
Plants are continuously exposed to a wide variety of perturbations including variation of temperature and/or light, mechanical forces, gravity, air and soil pollution, drought, deficiency or surplus of nutrients, attacks by insects and pathogens, etc. It is essential for all plants to have survival sensory mechanisms against such perturbations. As a consequence, plants generate various types of intracellular and intercellular electrical signals mostly in the form of action potentials or variation potentials in response to these environmental changes. However, over a long period, only certain plants with rapid and highly noticeable responses to environmental stresses have received much attention from plant scientists. Of particular interest to our recent studies on ultra fast action potential in green plants, we discuss in this review the possibility of utilizing green plants as fast biosensors for molecular recognition of the direction of light, monitoring the environment, and detecting the insect attacks as well as the effects of pesticides and defoliants.
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This work has been supported by NASA grant NAG8-1888.
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Volkov, A.G., Volkova-Gugeshashvili, M.I., Osei, A.J. (2009). Plants as Environmental Biosensors: Non-invasive Monitoring Techniques. In: Yanful, E.K. (eds) Appropriate Technologies for Environmental Protection in the Developing World. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9139-1_34
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9139-1_34
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