Plants Need First Aid Too

         Plants get injured just like humans, but don't have the ability to heal themselves as efficiently as we do, that was until recent discoveries. Researchers discovered a way to help plants recover from damage by using a pure form of cellulose that acts like a band aid. Bacterial cellulose is commonly used in human medicine to help treat wounds and burns. Núria Sánchez Coll, a plant biologists and her team started testing patches that were made up of not only bacterial cellulose but also silver nanoparticles, which served as a antimicrobial agent while helping the plants heal. As they observed the healing process, they noticed that the plants treated with the cellulose and silver nanoparticles were healing faster and more efficiently than expected. The researchers wanted to better understand molecular process of this so they made small cuts on the leaves of  Nicotiana benthamiana and Arabidopsis thaliana, placing cellulose bandages on half of them. The results after a week were that 80% of wounds were almost fully healed while the untreated wounds were still clearly damaged. The patches not only healed the plants wounds but also kept the plants more hydrated. Plant hormones that were likely produced by bacteria were found in the bacterial cellulose, this could be why the plants responded so well to the treatment even after patches were sterilized. Scientists think that the bacterial cellulose activated a new set of genes - it shut down some of the genes that are normally used for healing and switched on other genes that help the plant fight infections. 

    I thought this article was very interesting because it showed how scientists were able to use bacteria cellulose -  something thats already used in human medicine - to help plants heal more efficiently. I never thought about how when plants get damaged it usually takes a very long time for them to heal compared to animals and humans, mostly because plants don't have specialized cells that move as quickly to repair wounds. It's amazing that the researchers basically created a band aid for plants out of natural materials. I also learned that bacterial cellulose contains plant hormones that affect which genes are activated in the healing process. I think these plant band-aids would be very helpful in the agriculture industry, especially if they work well outside of lab conditions. This article just shows how scientific ideas that are used in one industry could be applied in another.