In the spring of 2015, researchers from the Laboratory of Organic Electronics at Link枚ping University presented a microfabricated ion pump with the ability to pump in the correct dose of a naturally occurring pain-relief agent exactly where it was needed. This was a first step towards effective treatment of such conditions as chronic pain. In the autumn of the same year, the researchers presented results showing how they had caused roses to absorb a water-soluble conducting polymer, enabling them to create a fully operational transistor in the rose stem. The term 鈥渇lower power鈥� suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
Delivering hormones to plants
鈥淎round 10 years ago, we started considering applying our ion pump drug delivery devices to plants. It wasn麓t until several years later that we teamed up with Professor Markus Grebe and colleagues at the Ume氓 Plant Science Centre and finally discovered that the ion pump could be of great use to plant biologists, says Daniel Simon, Associate Professor and head of the organic bioelectronics research area in the Laboratory of Organic Electronics, Link枚ping University.Assistant Professor David Poxson, Laboratory of Organic Electronics, teamed up with the group麓s chief chemist, Assistant Professor Roger Gabrielsson, to develop new ion pump materials capable of transporting and delivering powerful plant signalling compounds such as the hormone auxin.
Dr. Poxson then worked closely with biologists at the Ume氓 Plant Science Centre to investigate highly-resolved delivery of auxin to the roots of living thale cress, Arabidopsis thaliana. This plant is to plant biologists what the fruit fly Drosophila is to researchers working in animal research: a major model organism.
The result: Electronically-controlled gradients of plant hormone were taken up by the roots. Dr. Poxson and co-author Dr. Michal Karady followed the internal auxin response with the help of fluorescent reporter proteins that change their fluorescence intensity in the presence of auxin. They observed that the internal auxin response and even the roots麓 growth rate could be controlled by the ion pump delivery of auxin.
A ground-breaking step for plant research
鈥淲e have accomplished a ground-breaking step for plant research by our multidisciplinary effort鈥�, says Markus Grebe. 鈥淪everal research groups from Ume氓 Plant Science Centre and Link枚ping University have been involved. The pump will likely allow us to locally apply not only auxin but also a variety of other hormones to plants in an electronically controlled manner. This will help us to study the impact of these hormones on plant growth and development at tissue and cellular resolution.鈥�鈥淭hese new DendrolyteTM聽materials also paves the way for future ion pump capabilities in a variety of areas, for example delivery of larger aromatic compounds like plant hormones or even certain pharmaceuticals,鈥� says Daniel Simon.
The results have now been published in the prestigious scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
鈥淭his is an important advance: we now know not only that we can use the ion pump in plants, but also that we can regulate their physiology and growth,鈥� says Professor Magnus Berggren, head of the Laboratory of Organic Electronics.
The research has been funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation as part of the ShapeSystems project.
The article:
Regulating plant physiology with organic electronics, David Poxson, Michal Karady, Roger Gabrielsson, Aziz Alkattan, Anna Gustavsson, Siamsa Doyle, St茅phanie Robert, Karin Ljung, Markus Grebe, Daniel T Simon and Magnus Berggren, Link枚ping University, Ume氓 University and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences 2017, PNAS, doi/10.1073/pnas.1617758114
