Researchers have made an exciting new discovery about the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). It has long been known that the carnivorous plant uses electrical signals to close the leaf lobes to capture its prey.
Now, there is an interdisciplinary team of scientists from Johannes Gutenberg Mainz University (JGU), Helmholtz Mainz Institute (HIM), Biocenter Julius-Maximilians-Universität of Würzburg (JMU), and the Physikalisch-Technisch Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin it is proven that these electrical signals generate magnetic fields.
“You could say that the study is a bit like performing an MRI scan in humans,” said statement physicist Anne Fabricant, a doctoral candidate in Professor Dmitry Budker’s research group at JGU and HIM. “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.”
Fabricant said this finding has never been confirmed before. But it was not an easy task to accomplish.
The research team had to use atomic magnetometers that are more attractive for biological applications because they do not require cryogenic cooling and can also be miniaturized.
The researchers found magnetic markers with a size of up to 0.5 picotesla from the plant. This dimension is a million times weaker than the Earth’s magnetic field. “The magnitude of the recorded symptoms is similar to that seen at surface measurements of zero stimulation in animals,” Fabricant explained.
Physicists now hope that their noninvasive technologies will one day be used in agriculture for crop plant diagnosis. For example, they would detect electromagnetic responses about temperature changes, pests or chemical effects without the use of electrodes that could damage plants.
This discovery could lead to completely new ways of approaching agriculture and its associated activities such as, to date, biomagnetism is used mainly in humans and animals, not plants.
The results of the study were published in Scientific Reports.