An flytrap Venus (Dionaea muscipula) is already an interesting plant, but scientists have discovered something else amazing about it: It generates measurable magnetic fields as its leaves close.
And long gone D. muscipula, the latest research could teach us a lot about how plant life uses magnetic field signals to communicate and as a sign of disease (something we also see in humans and other animals).
Plants are known to use electrical signals as a kind of celestial system, but capturing biomagnetism has been difficult.
A study in 2011 attempted to find a magnetic field around Titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) – the large, fragrant plant – uses atomic magnetometers that are able to detect the smallest variables.
That study showed that no magnetic field plant generated more than a million of the strength of the magnetic field around us on Earth, and as a result the experiment was considered a failure.
The researchers involved in the 2011 study said their next steps, if any, were to target a smaller plant.
For the new study, a different group of researchers actually did less.
“We have been able to show that functional capabilities in a heterogeneous plant system produce measurable magnetic fields, something that has never been proven before,” says physicist Anne Fabricant, from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz (JGU), Germany.
Observing Venus’ airways. (Anne Fabricant)
These “action capabilities” are rapid explosions of electrical activity, and the Venus flytrap can have multiple stimuli: If the plant is rubbed, injured, under the influence of heat or cold, or loaded with liquid, capabilities cancel action.
Here the researchers used heat stimulation to activate electrical activity, and a glass cell magnetometer to measure magnetic disturbances. This approach not only kept background noise as low but had advantages over other methods in that it could be analyzed and did not require cryogenic cooling.
The measured magnetic signals went up to a size of 0.5 picotesla, compared to zero firing firing in humans and millions of times weaker than the Earth’s magnetic field – a small, but detectable ripple.
“You could say the study is a bit like performing an MRI scan in humans,” Fabricant says. “The problem is that the magnetic signals in plants are very weak, which explains why it was extremely difficult to measure them with the help of older technologies.”
In addition to MRI scans, other methods such as electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) are used to measure magnetic fields in humans, which can identify problems without any invasive procedures.
With the help of this current research, the same type of scanning may now be possible with plants as well: crops could be scanned for temperature movements, chemical changes or pests without damaging the plants. plants themselves, for example.
And we can add the conclusions to our growing knowledge of how plants send signals both indoors and outdoors, communicating through a hidden network that scientists just don’t begin to study properly.
“In addition to proof of principle, our findings pave the way for understanding the molecular basis of biomagnetism in living plants,” the researchers wrote in their published paper.
“In the future, magnetometry can be used to study long-distance electrical signals in several plant species, and to make noninvasive diagnoses of plant stress and disease.”
The research was published in Scientific Reports.