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Updated: Jun 22, 2026

Real-time In Vivo Recording of Arabidopsis Calcium Signals During Insect Feeding Using a Fluorescent Biosensor
Published on: August 15, 2017
Pharmacological evidence for calcium involvement in the long-term processing of abiotic stimuli in plants
Marie-Claire Verdus1, Lois Le Sceller, Victor Norris
1Laboratoire AMMIS; Faculté des Sciences de l'Université de Rouen; Mont-Saint-Aignan, France.
Abstract:
Information about abiotic conditions is stored for long periods in plants and, in flax seedlings, can lead to the production of meristems. To investigate the underlying mechanism, flax seedlings were given abiotic stimuli that included a mechanical stimulus (by manipulation), one or two cold shocks, a slow cold treatment and a drought stress and, if these seedlings were then subjected to a temporary (1 to 3 days) depletion of calcium, epidermal meristems were produced in the seedling hypocotyls. This production was inhibited by the addition to the nutrient media of EGTA, ruthenium red, lanthanum or gadolinium that affect calcium availability or calcium transport. Use of these agents revealed a period of vulnerability in information processing that was less than two min for mechanical stimuli and over five min for other abiotic stimuli, consistent with information about mechanical stimuli being stored particularly fast. We propose that external calcium is needed for the transduction/storage of the information for meristem production whilst a temporary depletion of external calcium is needed for the actual production of meristems. Such roles for calcium would be consistent with a mechanism based on ion condensation on charged polymers.
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