Could Contaminated Land Actually be Good for Trees? (IMAGE)
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The very act of tolerating some forms of soil pollution may give trees an advantage in the natural world, says University of Montreal plant biologists. Their findings were published this week in BMC Plant Biology. The research team compared the molecular response of willow trees, illustrated here, growing in contaminated or non-contaminated soil and found that several plant genes were expressed differently between both treatments. "The most fascinating result, however, comes from the fact that genetic information (RNA) from other organisms, such as fungi, bacteria and insects were also found to be expressed differentially in plant tissues. Notably, 99 percent of RNA from spider mites, a common plant pest, was in higher abundance in trees growing without contamination," explained Nicolas Brereton, co-first author of the study. "This suggests that trees growing in contaminated soils might have reacted in a way that makes them less prone to herbivore attacks by priming their defense machinery."
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Université de Montréal
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