Researchers Discover New Plant "Language"

An anonymous reader writes A Virginia Tech scientist has discovered a potentially new form of plant communication, that allows them to share genetic information with one another. Jim Westwood, a professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science, found evidence of this new communication mode by investigating the relationship between dodder, a parasitic plant, and the flowering plant Arabidopsis and tomato plants to which it attaches and sucks out nutrients with an appendage called a haustorium. Westwood examined the plants' mRNA, the molecule in cells that instructs organisms how to code certain proteins that are key to functioning. MRNA helps to regulate plant development and can control when plants eventually flowers. He found that the parasitic and the host plants were exchanging thousands of mRNA molecules between each other, thus creating a conversation.

You've been working on that flower for a week now

[Anonymous Coward]

When is this feature going to be ready?

Perseids

[kruach aum]

Did anyone see the Perseids a couple of days ago? Did they look a bit green to anyone else, or was that just me?

Oblig.

[Sigmon]

It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything unless it is worth taking a long time to say.