Parasitic Plants May Be Talking To Their Hosts Through MRNA

Parasitic Plants May Be Talking To Their Hosts Through MRNA: "Westwood looked at the relationship between dodder, a parasitic plant, and two host plants, Arabidopsis and tomatoes. Dodder sucks nutrients out of its hosts with a haustorium, which penetrates the host, transferring thousands of mRNA -- or messenger RNA -- molecules between the plants.

Westwood said in a press release this exchange of mRNA might mean the parasitic plants are telling the host what do to, such as lower its defenses to allow the parasite to feed more easily. The next step is to determine what the plants are saying and whether the same relationship exists between bacteria and fungi.

"The beauty of this discovery is that this mRNA could be the Achilles heel for parasites," Westwood said. “This is all really exciting because there are so many potential implications surrounding this new information.""



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