Plant bioelectronics for decoding electrical signaling in plants

To sustain a healthy ecosystem and to meet the growing demands for food, there is a critical need to engineer plants with enhanced tolerance to environmental stress.

Plants have developed signaling processes that enable rapid transmission of information, from local stress sites to distant tissues, activating plant wide-defense responses. Substantial evidence supports the importance of electrical signals in plants systemic signaling. However, these signals have yet to be fully decoded.

The goal of the project is to significantly advance our understanding of plants’ electrical signaling in response to stress, by developing a multimodal approach that integrates plant bioelectronics with quantitative imaging and genetic tools.

We will:i.Decode the generation and propagation of electrical signals in response to various stresses, with high resolution electrophysiology.ii.Elucidate the correlation and interplay between various components of systemic signaling by combining high resolution electrophysiology and quantitative live imaging in plants expressing genetically encoded fluorescent indicators.iii.Examine whether plants systemic response and defense mechanisms are activated under externally applied physical stimuli.

Such knowledge can facilitate the engineering of plants that acclimate better to environmental stress.

Moreover, plant bioelectronics hold promise for high-throughput phenotyping, which could accelerate basic and applied research.