Plants feel the force

Plants feel the force

At the bottom of plants’ ability to sense touch, gravity or the proximity of a nearby trellis are mechanosensitive channels, pores through the cells’ plasma membrane that are opened and closed by the deformation of the membrane. Elizabeth Haswell, PhD, a biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, is studying the roles these channels play in Arabidopsis plants by growing mutant plants that lack one or more of the 10 possible channel proteins in this species.