SchwartzReport From the July 1, 2010 translation a cura di Erica Dellago e Clea Nardi.
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Ricordo nei primi anni settanta, quando i miei due amici, Christopher Bird e Peter Tompkins che stavano scrivendo quello che divenne un best seller, “ La vita segreta delle piante ”, mi presentarono a Cleve Backster le cui ricerche avevano dimostrato che le piante avevano in parte una coscienza. Tutti e tre, Peter, Chris e Cleve furono soggetti a devastante critica perlopiù ad hominem, da biologi costretti nel paradigma e da altri negazionisti che semplicemente non potevano accettare che alcuna altra specie diversa dall’essere umano potesse avere consapevolezza cosciente. VICTORIA GILL, Reporter of Science - BBC News (UK)
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plants, the researchers believe they can "remember" and "react" to the information contained in the light. plants, scientists say, provide information on the intensity and quality of light from leaf to leaf in a way similar to that of our nervous systems. These "electrochemical signals" are carried by cells that act as "nerves" of plants. In their experiment, scientists have shown that a beam of light striking a leaf because the response of the whole plant. And response, which took the form of chemical reactions induced by light on leaves, was continued in the dark. This demonstrates, they said, that the plant will "remember" the information encoded in light. "We illuminated only the lower part of the plant and observed the changes at the top ," said Professor Stanislaw Karpinski who led this research, the University of Life Sciences in Warsaw in Poland. He presented the results at the annual meeting of the Society of Experimental Biology in Prague, Czech Republic " And the changes continued even when we turned off the light ... This was a total surprise . " In previous studies, Professor Karpinski, had discovered that chemical signals could be transferred through the entire plants - allowing them to react and survive the changes and stress of their environment. But in this new study, he and his colleagues discovered that when light stimulates a chemical reaction in a cell of a leaf, which causes a cascade of events, coming immediately reported to the rest of the plant through a specific cell type called the bundle sheath cell, the cells that wrap around the ribs of the leaves in C4 plants. The scientists measured the electrical signals of these cells, which are present in every leaf, discovering what could be described as the "nervous system" of plants.
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Plants that think
What was even more special, said Professor Karpinski, is that the response of plants varies according to the color of light that was pointed at them. " There are characteristic changes for the red, blue or white ," he said, suspecting that plants can use the information contained in light to stimulate protective chemical reactions. He and his colleagues examined all this more closely observing the effect of the different colors of light immunity of plants to disease. " When we lit the tree for an hour and then infected with a virus or a bacterium after 24 hours of exposure, it has resisted infection " he said. " But when we infected the first plant to use light, it could not develop resistance ." " So the plant has a specific memory for the light it develops its immunity against pathogens, and able to adapt to varying light conditions. " He said plants have used the information coded in light to immunize against pathogens season. " Every day or week of the season has its own characteristic light ," said Professor Karpinski. " So the plants are running some kind of biological computation of light, using the information contained in light to immunize against diseases prevalent during that season ." Professor Christine Foyer, a plant biologist at the University of Leeds, said that research "has led our thinking one step ahead . " The plants must survive the stress such as drought and cold, resist and continue to grow , "he told the BBC News," and this requires an assessment of the situation and appropriate response - this process is considered a form of intelligence . " " What this research has done is to connect two signaling pathways together .. and the electrical system is incredibly fast, so the whole plant was able to react instantly to the brightest light ."
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source: www.coscienza.org
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