ArticleCurrent biology : CB2016
The Venus Flytrap Dionaea muscipula Counts Prey-Induced Action Potentials to Induce Sodium Uptake.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 64 papers.
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Who cites it
64 citing papers in PubMed, 169 citations in OpenAlex.
- Thermal petiole wounding triggers trap closure inPlant signaling & behavior · 2026Article
- Learning in plants: A conceptual and experimental primer.Learning & behavior · 2026Article
- Transcriptomic prey-capture responses in convergently evolved carnivorous pitcher plants.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- The power of ionic movements in plants.The New phytologist · 2026Review
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- Response of Plants to Touch Stress at Morphological, Physiological and Molecular Levels.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Article
- Venus flytraps' metabolome analysis discloses the metabolic fate of prey animal foodstock.The Plant journal : for cell and molecular biology · 2025Article
- Inference of mechanical forces through 3D reconstruction of the closing motion in venus flytrap leaves.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Electrical signaling in fungi: past and present challenges.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2025Review
- Potassium extrusion by plant cells: evolution from an emergency valve to a driver of long-distance transport.The New phytologist · 2025Review
- Asymmetrical distribution of supports affect pea plants movement and shape: Evidence of quantity discrimination?PloS one · 2025Article
- How (not) to Talk to a Plant: An Application of Automata Theory to Plant Communication.Acta biotheoretica · 2024Article
- Getting it right: suppression and leveraging of noise in robust decision-making.Quantitative plant biology · 2024Review
- Comparative transcriptomics of Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) across stages of prey capture and digestion.PloS one · 2024Article
- Is the co-option of jasmonate signalling for botanical carnivory a universal trait for all carnivorous plants?Journal of experimental botany · 2024Article
- Plant electrophysiology with conformable organic electronics: Deciphering the propagation of Venus flytrap action potentials.Science advances · 2023Article
- Integration of Electrical Signals and Phytohormones in the Control of Systemic Response.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Snatching Sundews-Analysis of Tentacle Movement in Two Species ofPlants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Characterization, costs, cues and future perspectives of phenotypic plasticity.Annals of botany · 2022Review
4 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Carnivorous plants, such as the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), depend on an animal diet when grown in nutrient-poor soils. When an insect visits the trap and tilts the mechanosensors on the inner surface, action potentials (APs) are fired. After a moving object elicits two APs, the trap snaps shut, encaging the victim. Panicking preys repeatedly touch the trigger hairs over the subsequent hours, leading to a hermetically closed trap, which via the gland-based endocrine system is flooded by a prey-decomposing acidic enzyme cocktail. Here, we asked the question as to how many times trigger hairs have to be stimulated (e.g., now many APs are required) for the flytrap to recognize an encaged object as potential food, thus making it worthwhile activating the glands. By applying a series of trigger-hair stimulations, we found that the touch hormone jasmonic acid (JA) signaling pathway is activated after the second stimulus, while more than three APs are required to trigger an expression of genes encoding prey-degrading hydrolases, and that this expression is proportional to the number of mechanical stimulations. A decomposing animal contains a sodium load, and we have found that these sodium ions enter the capture organ via glands. We identified a flytrap sodium channel DmHKT1 as responsible for this sodium acquisition, with the number of transcripts expressed being dependent on the number of mechano-electric stimulations. Hence, the number of APs a victim triggers while trying to break out of the trap identifies the moving prey as a struggling Na(+)-rich animal and nutrition for the plant.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.