Electrical Signals in Plants Paper

ePortfolio Paper

Plants have been evolving for hundreds of millions of years (Wikipedia contributors, 2020a). The first to appear were but the humble simple green algae around fifteen hundred million years ago (Wikipedia contributors, 2020a). Long after evolved the liverworts. Following the liverworts evolved the much more attractive mosses and hornworts around five hundred million years ago that crept up upon the land (Wikipedia contributors, 2020a). Ferns appeared next, around 80 million years later and with their vascular abilities they grew taller and reached farther toward the sky (Wikipedia contributors, 2020a). Gymnosperms, with their unprotected seeds evolve next around three hundred and fifty million years ago (Wikipedia contributors, 2020a). Finally, angiosperms with their beautiful flowers and seed protecting carpels appeared about a hundred and fifty million years ago (Wikipedia contributors, 2020a). Scientist have been trying to better understand how plants today came to be. A group of scientists studied all of these major plant groups and took a look at the gene sequences responsible for producing voltage gated potassium channels which are a type of transmembrane protein that creates ion channels that move ions when the membrane potential changes (University of Tasmania, 2020; Wikipedia contributors, 2020b). This is similar to the TCP1 family of proteins found in humans that are also a type of transmembrane protein that creates ion channels, but move calcium ions when the membrane potential changes (Wikipedia contributors, 2020c). They did this in hopes of gaining a better understanding of plant evolution by looking at the variations (University of Tasmania, 2020).This post analyzes the paper written by those scientists that is entitle, How to Grow a Tree: Plant Voltage-Dependent Cation Channels in the Spotlight of Evolution and waswritten by scientists and authors Dreyer, I., Sussmilch, F.C., Fukushima, K., Riadi, G., Becker, D., Schultz, J., and Hedrich, R. 

Works Cited

University of Tasmania. (2020). Excitable cells: Tracking the evolution of electrical signaling in plants. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-cells-tracking-evolution-electrical.html

Wikipedia contributors. (2020a). Plant Evolution, https://en.wikipedia.org/plants

Wikipedia contributors. (2020b). Voltage-gated Ion Channel, https://wikipedia.org/ion

Wikipedia contributors. (2020c). TCP1,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TPCN1