This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: There's more to growing a plant than just adding enough water and providing adequate sunlight. Every new leaf, root and flower depends on communication between the plant's countless cells—an intricate cellular conversation that has enabled trees, grasses and crops to survive on land for nearly half a billion years.
For the past 30 years, HHMI Investigator Keiko Torii has been listening to and decoding these cellular transmissions. Her research has revealed the molecular machinery that powers cellular communication and enables plants to adapt to changes in their environment—from conserving water in a drought to fighting off invading pathogens. Research by Torii and her team at the University of Texas at Austin not only helps scientists develop crops that can withstand changing conditions but also provides insights into how our own cells stay resilient.
Although plants and animals evolved independently, they both rely on sophisticated systems of cellular communication to stay alive. "It doesn't really matter whether a person is studying a particular type of cancer or bacterial communities or plant biology; it is all connected," Torii says. "I think plants can give us a lot of hints that we can all learn from." Early in her career, Torii was part of a team that discovered ERECTA, a receptor that spans the plant's cell membrane, allowing it to receive incoming signals from neighboring cells.
These communication signals allow cells to regulate the plant's growth and development, including the patterning of stomata—pores on the leaf surface through which gases and water vapor are exchanged. ERECTA can adjust the number of stomata based on the signals it receives about the plant's development or environmental conditions. Researchers have shown that when ERECTA becomes activated, it triggers a signaling cascade inside the cell that eventually turns genes on or off.
These genes include the "master regulators" of stomatal differentiation—with fun names like SCREAM, SPEECHLESS and MUTE—that Torii's team also identified. But exactly how this process works—and what happens to the receptor inside the cell when it's activated—has remained elusive. To get a full picture, Torii and her team recently examined proteins that interact with the receptor and are nearby when the receptor is activated.
They identified proteins that shuttle ERECTA to the cell's internal vesicles and, eventually, to the plant's vacuoles—storage compartments that degrade the receptor. Companion research shows how activated ERECTA receptors are marked for ingestion and degradation. "This whole routine has to be running for proper signaling," Torii says.
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