"How do roots respond to what the top of the plant experiences? With an elaborate communication system resembling email.
The authors of a paper in Science Magazine:
Nitrogen (N) is a critical nutrient for plants but is often distributed unevenly in the soil. Plants therefore have evolved a systemic mechanism by which N starvation on one side of the root system leads to a compensatory and increased nitrate uptake on the other side. Here, we study the molecular systems that support perception of N and the long-distance signaling needed to alter root development. Rootlets starved of N secrete small peptides that are translocated to the shoot and received by two leucine-rich repeat receptor kinases (LRR-RKs). Arabidopsis plants deficient in this pathway show growth retardation accompanied with N-deficiency symptoms. Thus, signaling from the root to the shoot helps the plant adapt to fluctuations in local N availability.
These small peptides, in other words, provide information sent from the roots to the growing shoots at the top of the plant. But that’s not all; the shoot responds to its email with a message back down to the roots.
The system presupposes that cells in the shoot can “read” the peptide, understand it, and respond appropriately. Ditto for the reader down underground.
Scientists cannot yet “read” the email messages. “The nature of the signal from the shoot that triggers lateral root foraging behavior in the +N compartment remains to be resolved,” Bisseling and Scheres state. But like watching two parties communicate in a foreign language and then respond with actions, the scientists can tell that communication is occurring. It’s not sentient communication, as with human verbal communication. It’s more like computer language: preprogrammed, digital, and responsive.
The evolution-talk is so useless. Secular scientists
And God said,
Let the earth bring forth ...the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind,
whose seed is in itself, upon the earth:
Genesis 1:11
