Plants just sit and grow. They do not see, smell or touch or do they? A new study by Rice University scientists reveals that plants can use the sense of touch to fight off fungal infections and insects. The study, which will be published in the April 24 issue of Current Biology, finds that plant defenses are enhanced when plants are touched. Rice University biologists found that plant defenses against leaf-eating herbivores, like this cabbage looper caterpillar, are activated by the plant’s sense of touch. “From previous studies, we knew that plants change their growth in response to touch but we didn’t know how these growth changes were activated,” said Wassim Chehab, a faculty fellow in Rice’s Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology and lead author of the new study. “We used a widely studied plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, to test the idea that the touch-induced growth was regulated by a plant hormone called jasmonate.”

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Touchy Plants

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