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When pathogens enter a plant, infected cells set off an alarm before they die. They discharge methylsalicylic acid, which is subsequently converted into salicylic acid, triggering an immune response. Hence, salicylic acid is a stress signal in plants, but it also participates in the regulation of plant growth and development. In humans, salicylic acid has been shown to be useful in a different way: as early as prehistoric times, people realized that when they drank willow bark tea or took other willow bark preparations, the fever subsided and the pain disappeared. . Centuries later, scientists developed salicylic acid derivatives such as aspirin and ibuprofen. These so-called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) suppress the inflammatory response of mammalian cells, making us feel better when we have a cold. But how do they affect plants?
Losing a sense of direction
“When I first got the idea, I had a very severe toothache and had some ibuprofen on hand,” explains Shutang Tan, who was a postdoc at the time at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST). Austria who worked in Professor Ji’s group? Í Friml. “I simply used the pharmacy tablets and took the same amount as my previous experiments with salicylic acid. Then, I observed the effect of ibuprofen on Arabidopsis seedlings.” The primary roots of the plant were significantly shorter and instead of growing downward, they were curling up, unable to respond to gravity. Furthermore, the plants developed less or no lateral roots.
Together with colleagues from IST Austria and six other research institutes, Shutang Tan examined the effects of 20 different pain relievers on Arabidopsis seedlings. “We found that all the pain relievers we tested, including aspirin and ibuprofen, interfered with the flow of auxin,” explains Tan. The plant hormone auxin is essential for all development processes within a plant. It is particularly responsible for the ability of plants to stretch leaves towards the sun and roots towards the center of the earth. So-called PIN proteins regulate the flow of auxin from one cell to another, depending on which side of the cell they are in. If the PIN proteins are not in the right position within the cell, the auxin flow is disturbed, leading to faulty plant development. Hence, pain relievers appeared to interfere with pin protein localization. But that’s not all.
Complex dynamics within plant cells
Looking closely, the scientists found that the effect is not limited to PIN proteins, but that the drugs interfere with the entire endomembrane system, suppressing the movement and trafficking of substances within cells. Painkillers impair the dynamics of the cell cytoskeleton, a network of interconnected proteins, which among other things gives the cell its shape and is involved in the absorption of extracellular material. Together with Markus Geisler’s team at the University of Friborg, Switzerland, researchers from IST Austria found that a group of pain relievers, including the drugs meclophenamic acid and fluphenamic acid, directly targets an immunophilin-like protein. called TWISTED DWARF1, to realize these physiological and cellular activities.
Furthermore, the scientists were able to demonstrate that NSAIDs have cellular physiological and biological effects similar to those of auxin transport inhibitors, important chemical tools in cell biology, which interfere with auxin transport. “It would be very interesting to find out if these auxin transport inhibitors can also be used as pain relievers in animals. This is a big question we still have to answer,” Tan concludes. Together with Professor Ji? Í Friml of IST, Shutang Tan, who is now setting up his own laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China, wants to investigate what additional proteins within the plant are targeted by pain relievers and what pathways they use to do so.
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Materials provided by Institute of Science and Technology Austria. Note: The content can be changed by style and length.
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