Recommend Plant Signaling & Behavior (PS&B) to your librarian for 2008. Download form here.
Sign up for Table of Contents Alerts!
PS&B is the official journal of the Society for Plant Neurobiology. Full membership ($60 annually) and student membership ($30 annually) include online access to the journal. Click here to join.
Email this page
Print this page
Article Addendum
Secret Message at the Plant Surface
Hernán Boccalandro, Jorge Casal and Laura Serna
volume 2 | issue 5
september/octoberPages: 373 - 375
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.
In general, stomata open during the day and close at night. This behaviour has a crucial importance because it maximizes the update of CO2 for photosynthesis and minimizes the water loss. Blue light is one of the environmental factors that regulates this process. Certainly, when either entire plants or epidermal strips adapted to the dark are exposed to blue light, the stomata open widely their pores. But, what does happen if we illuminate individual stomata instead of peels or entire plants? In the inaugural issue of PLoS ONE, we have answered this question by irradiating individual stomata with a laser attached to a confocal microscope. Our study not only demonstrates that the stomata function independently from the behaviour of their neighbours, and illuminates the implication of the blue light receptors PHOTOTROPIN1 and PHOTOTROPIN2 in such response. It also gives clues about the physiological relevancy of this behaviour.
Authors
Hernán Boccalandro
Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina
Jorge Casal
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
Laura Serna
Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Toledo, Spain
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.