Plants have pinholes in their leaves called stomata -mouth in Greek which collect carbon dioxide from the air and from which the water evaporates.
A new laboratory work of Dominique Bergmann, an honorary member associate of the Department of Plant Biology at Stanford University (USA), reveals in what ways the systems that regulate the development of stomata in grasses can be used to improve agricultural efficiency .
Each year, over 30% of all carbon dioxide in our atmosphere passes through stomata, also the amount of steam release of water equivalent to twice that in the atmosphere. Furthermore, plants have a strong influence on global climate and regulate climate change.
Stomata have been found in plant fossils 400 million years ago, and are characteristic of any current living plant, although they may take different forms in different plants.
All we knew about how genes determine plant stomata prevented the study of a plant “model”, Arabidopsis, a relative of broccoli and cabbage. As this plant is very different grasses, until now it was not known whether or not the latter used the same genes as Arabidopsis to produce their own stomata.
The new study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and led by scientists Michael Raissig and Emily Abrash, focused on the stomata of grasses, a family that includes corn, rice and wheat, and which it is key to human and animal feed; as well as to produce renewable fuel.
Differences
But the decision to study the stomata of grasses not taken only by the economic and environmental importance of these plants, but also because the stomata of grasses present several innovations that make them more efficient at capturing carbon dioxide and to limit water loss.
For example, stomata-the grasses have a characteristic shape of a dumbbell (a dumbbell or a metal bar or heavier pieces at each end) – instead of the classic kidney shape they have in most the other plants.
Also stomata grasses aligned in rows around the stem of the leaves, while the distribution of stomata in plants broadleaf is completely random. Some scientists believe that the shape and distribution of stomata in grasses are the key to their evolutionary success.
The same genes, with another organization
Using various laboratory techniques, equipment Bergmann managed to clarify parts of regulatory systems grasses that activate or silence certain genes; genes which in turn are what determine the number of stomata that these plants produce;the place where the stomata appear; and its various forms.
Surprisingly, these differences do not occur because grasses use unique genes for stomata but because they use the same genes as other plants in different ways.
It is as if, in a circuit, the same components are used, but organizing them in different ways. This ‘reorganization’ partly explain how grasses give different forms to the stomata, providing them with a better prepared physiology.
The exciting thing about this finding, Bergmann said in a statement the Carnegie Institute, is that “we can now manipulate the genes of plants to produce stomata”.
“Plants use apparently common elements, but in a different way, which is interesting from the scientific point of view and could be used to enhance the growth of grasses that humans use for food or fuel,” concludes the researcher .
