Dynamic protoneural networks in plants

Abstract

Taking as a basis of discussion Kalanchoe’s spontaneous and evoked extracellular activities recorded at the whole plant level, we put the challenging questions: do these low-voltage variations, together with endocellular events, reflect integrative properties and complex behavior in plants? Does it reflect common perceptive systems in animal and plant species? Is the ability of plants to treat short-term variations and information transfer without nervous system relevant? Is a protoneural construction of the world by lower organisms possible? More generally, the aim of this paper is to reevaluate the probably underestimated role of plant surface potentials in the plant relation life, carefully comparing the biogenesis of both animal and plant organisms in the era of plant neurobiology. Knowing that surface potentials participate at least to morphogenesis, cell to cell coupling, long distance transmission and transduction of stimuli, some hypothesis are given indicating that plants have to be studied as environmental biosensors and non linear dynamic systems able to detect transitional states between perception and response to stimuli. This study is conducted in the frame of the “plasticity paradigm,” which gives a theoretical model of evolutionary processes and suggests some hypothesis about the nature of complexity, information and behavior.

Keywords: :

• extracellular surface potential variations
• protoneural networks
• plant neuroplasticity
• nonlinear dynamic systems
• biosensors
• plant behavior
• transdisciplinarity

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.

Acknowledgments

We thank Professor F. Baluška for his encouragements to write this paper and Ilke Angela Marechal for the proofreading of the manuscript in English.