Plants, Microbes Team Up to Resist Drought

Futurity.org
Published February 20, 2013
No Author
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/plants-microbes-team-up-to-resist-drought/

Summary

A study at Penn State has shown that viruses and fungi can help plants survive in certain tough conditions. The researchers tested infected different species of plants with different viruses and found that viruses helped increase drought resistance and sometimes cold tolerance. Further evidence suggests that the virus does not have to replicate in the specific cells where resistance occurs to produce this effect. Other studies have studied plants that live in volcanic soils and geothermal ground and found that the plants need to grow together with a fungi in order to tolerate the high temperatures. Plant fungi often have viruses, so viruses may also be responsible for this trend. Researchers do not understand how viruses help plants, but are researching more in hopes of finding a way to use this information to increase crop production in times of drought.

Connection

This relates to our study of plants and viruses. We learned that viruses are packages of nucleic acids wrapped in a protein coat that insert themselves into a host’s DNA in order to reproduce. We learned about pathogenic viruses, however this article shows that viruses are not always harmful. The virus DNA may be responsible for changing the plants characteristics. Also, it relates to what we learned about plants surviving in stressful environments. Plants normally would need an adaptation to survive during a drought, and the symbiotic relationship with a virus shows another adaptation to survive  a lack of water.